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Haruki Murakami Quotes - Page 27

All Quotes Acceptance Age Appearance Attitude Autumn Balance Bones Change Chaos Character Choices Concentration Confusion Consciousness Curiosity Darkness Desire Destiny Disappointment Doubt Dying Earth Effort Emptiness End Of The World Evil Falling In Love Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Film Focus Fun Giving Giving Up Growing Up Hate Heart Home House Hurt Imagination Imperfection Inspirational Inspiring Joy Judging Justice Kindness Labyrinth Language Leaving Life Listening Literature Live Life Logic Loneliness Loss Love Luck Lying Marathon Math Memories Metaphor Moon Morning Mountain Nothingness Opportunity Pain Passion Past Perfection Personality Philosophy Purpose Quality Quitting Rain Reading Reality Regret Responsibility Running Sadness School Silence Sleep Solitude Sorrow Soul Spring Struggle Style Summer Sunday Talent Time Today Training Understanding Values Waiting Wall War Water Winter Work Out Worry Writing
I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm just a guy who can write.

I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm just a guy who can write.

Haruki Murakami
Writing, Artist, Thinking

For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary – or perhaps more like mediocre – level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

Haruki Murakami
Running, Distance, Mean
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jun 03, 2015

You're wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this." "I believe you," she whispers after a moment. "Please find my mind.

Haruki Murakami
Believe, Fall, Sky
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World”, p.352, Random House

One listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed.

Haruki Murakami
Order, Next, Changed
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”, p.106, Random House

If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit.

Haruki Murakami
Thinking, Limits, Unfair
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Norwegian Wood”, p.266, Random House

Crying is personal. On the other hand, laughing is more general . Laughing makes our hearts wider.

Haruki Murakami
Heart, Hands, Laughing
Source: yositeru.blogspot.com

You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath.

Haruki Murakami
Sound, Ponds, Stones
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Mar 24, 2015

Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.

Haruki Murakami
Music, Winter, Mind

I've been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It's natural.

Haruki Murakami
Running, Years, Getting Older
"Marathon man". Interview with Richard Williams, www.theguardian.com. May 16, 2003.

You live by yourself for a stretch of time and you get to staring at different objects. Sometimes you talk to yourself. You take meals in crowded joints. You develop an intimate relationship with your used Subaru. You slowly but surely become a has-been.

Haruki Murakami
Intimate Relationships, Meals, Different
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Dance Dance Dance”, p.31, Random House

But why should you be interested in me?" Good question. I can’t explain it myself right this moment. But maybe – just maybe – if we start getting together and talking, after a while something like Francis Lai’s soundtrack music will start playing in the background, and a whole slew of concrete reasons why I’m interested in you will line up out of nowhere. With luck, it might even snow for us.

Haruki Murakami
Talking, Snow, Luck
Haruki Murakami (2011). “After Dark”, p.188, Random House

Were the stars out when I left the house last evening? All I could remember was the couple in the Skyline listening to Duran Duran. Stars? Who remembers stars? Come to think of it, had I even looked up at the sky recently? Had the stars been wiped out of the sky three months ago, I wouldn’t have known.

Haruki Murakami
Stars, Couple, Thinking
Haruki Murakami (1993). “Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel”, Vintage

What we needed were not words and promises but a steady accumulation of small realities.

Haruki Murakami
Life, Reality, Promise

We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever.

Haruki Murakami
Light, Flames, Forever

Painful is the stress when one cannot reproduce or convey vividly to others, however hard he tries, what he's experienced so intensely.

Haruki Murakami
Stress, Trying, Painful
"A Long Way from The Stuffed Cabbage". Short story by Haruki Murakami,

Once a guy starts using a wig, he has to keep using one. It's, like, his fate. That's why wig makers make such huge profits. I hate to say it, but they're like drug dealers.

Haruki Murakami
Hate, Fate, Guy
"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Book by Haruki Murakami, 1994.

My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples, some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.

Haruki Murakami
Fall, Games, Labyrinth
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Dance Dance Dance”, p.210, Random House

Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us. If we were no longer here, words would lose their whole function. They would end up as words that are never spoken, and words that aren't spoken are no longer words. - (Where I'm Likely To Find It)

Haruki Murakami
Needs, Sometimes, Function
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Sep 18, 2015

I’m not good at talking,” Naoko said. “Haven’t been for the longest while. I start to say something and the wrong words come out. Wrong or sometimes completely backward. I try to go back and correct it, but things get even more complicated and confused, so that I don’t even remember what I started to say in the first place. Like I was split into two or something, one half chasing the other. And there’s this big pillar in the middle and they go chasing each other around and around it. The other me always latches onto the right word and this me absolutely never catches up

Haruki Murakami
Confused, Talking, Two
Haruki Murakami (1989). “Norwegian Wood”

Results aside, the ability to have complete faith in another human being is one of the finest qualities a person can possess.

Haruki Murakami
Quality, Finest, Results
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Mar 15, 2017

Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn't seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved.

Haruki Murakami
Suicide, Heart, People
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Dance Dance Dance”, p.332, Random House

You're afraid of imagination and even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the resposibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep and dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination but you can't supress dreams.

Haruki Murakami
Dream, Sleep, Imagination

Someone who can search for something is happy. Searching gives a meaning to life. Nowadays it’s not so easy to find something you might be looking for. The most important thing, however, is the search itself, the way you take. It’s not so important where it leads. that’s why my characters are always looking for something, maybe only a cat, a sheep or a wife, but that is at least the beginning of a story.

Haruki Murakami
Character, Cat, Sheep

I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing.

Haruki Murakami
Lonely, Body, Feels

It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck.

Haruki Murakami
Attitude, Hard Work, Luck

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