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Haruki Murakami Quotes - Page 17

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Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another.

Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another.

Haruki Murakami
Heart, Evil, May
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Oct 28, 2015

What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.

Haruki Murakami
Giving Up, Cat, Thinking
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jun 16, 2011

You end up exhausted and spent, but later, in retrospect, you realize what it all was for. The parts fall into place, and you can see the whole picture and finally understand the role each individual part plays. The dawn comes, the sky grows light, and the colors and shapes of the roofs of houses, which you could only glimpse vaguely before, come into focus.

Haruki Murakami
Fall, Light, Color

Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.

Haruki Murakami
Inspirational, Teacher, Heart

She's always polite and kind, but her words lack the kind of curiosity and excitement you'd normally expect. Her true feelings- assuming such things exist- remain hidden away. Except for when a practical sort of decision has to be made, she never gives her personal opinion about anything. She seldom talks about herself, instead letting others talk, nodding warmly as she listens. But most people start to feel vaguely uneasy when talking with her, as if they suspect they're wasting her time, trampling on her private, graceful, dignified world. And that impression is, for the most part, correct.

Haruki Murakami
Personal Opinions, Talking, People

I don't want our relationship to end like this. You're one of the very few friends I have, and it hurts not being able to see you. When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least.

Haruki Murakami
Hurt, Want, Few Friends

The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.

Haruki Murakami
Love Life, Evil, Justice
"Kafka on the Shore". Book by Haruki Murakami, 2002.

We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died longe ago.Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when death claim me, no doubt I would walk along by that faint light in the brief instant before being flung once again into the abyss of nothingness

Haruki Murakami
Memories, Heart, Light

The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to. We'd just make small talk, play soccer together. When something bothered me, I didn't talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that's just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.

Haruki Murakami
Soccer, Lonely, Couple

Only people who have been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Elliot calls 'hollow men'. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to.

Haruki Murakami
Hurt, Pain, Men

When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf.

Haruki Murakami
Book, Breathing, Smell
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Sep 08, 2014

Not just beautiful, though — the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me. What I’ve up till now, what I’m going to do — they know it all. Nothing gets past their watchful eyes. As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart’s pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I’ve never given them more than a passing thought before. Not just the stars — how many other things haven’t I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about?

Haruki Murakami
Beautiful, Stars, Heart
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Dec 23, 2013

Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.

Haruki Murakami
Fun, Reflection, Mirrors
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from May 15, 2015

The good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake. If it’s a real dream, you cannot control it. When writing the book, you are awake; you can choose the time, the length, everything. I write for four or five hours in the morning and when the time comes, I stop. I can continue the next day. If it’s a real dream, you can’t do that.

Haruki Murakami
Dream, Morning, Real

If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive then in a fog, and I believe #‎ running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life.

Haruki Murakami
Running, Believe, Clear Goals

I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.

Haruki Murakami
Mind, Important, Routine
"Haruki Murakami, The Art of Fiction No. 182". Interview with John Wray, www.theparisreview.org. 2004.

Then when dusk began to settle he would retrace his steps, back to his own world. And on the way home, a loneliness would always claim his heart. He could never quite get a grip on what it was. It just seemed that whatever lay waiting "out there" was all too vast, too overwhelming for him to possibly ever make a dent in.

Haruki Murakami
Loneliness, Home, Heart

And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west. The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other's 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully.

Haruki Murakami
Fate, Perfect, Miracle

Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves.

Haruki Murakami
Memories, Taken, Self
Haruki Murakami (2011). “1Q84: Books 1 and 2”, p.275, Random House

There's no sense forcing yourself if you don't feel like it. Tell you the truth, I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.

Haruki Murakami
Sex, Fear, Thinking

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

Haruki Murakami
Memories, Past, Devouring

I wasn't in love with her. And she didn't love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What I sought was the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial. I had no idea what that was. But I wanted to thrust my hand right inside her body and touch it, whatever it was.

Haruki Murakami
Hands, Ideas, Lust

After all this, I won't start to hate you.

Haruki Murakami
Hate, Hate You
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Sputnik Sweetheart”, p.70, Random House

Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.

Haruki Murakami
Strength, Wall, Two Sides
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Nov 27, 2012

What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get in the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things.

Haruki Murakami
Real, Thinking, World
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from May 10, 2015

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