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Haruki Murakami Quotes - Page 31

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she was beautiful and seemingly quite intelligent, what with her pentameter search system. There wasn't a reason in the world not to find her appealing.

she was beautiful and seemingly quite intelligent, what with her pentameter search system. There wasn't a reason in the world not to find her appealing.

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

A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.

Haruki Murakami
Real, Baptism, Stories

Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.

Haruki Murakami
Writing, Want, Mature
Haruki Murakami (2011). “1Q84:”, p.184, Random House

Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn't keep on living like this.

Haruki Murakami
Autumn, Giving, Decision
Haruki Murakami (2011). “South Of The Border, West Of The Sun”, p.137, Random House

It's true though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night," the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. "You can't fight it.

Haruki Murakami
Moving, Book, Fighting

If you really want to know what's happening here and now, you've got to use your own eyes and your own judgment.

Haruki Murakami
Eye, Use, Want

When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.

Haruki Murakami
Heart, Two, Solitude
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Sputnik Sweetheart”, p.129, Random House

I move, therefore I am.

Haruki Murakami
Moving

Everything in life is a metaphor.

Haruki Murakami
Life Is, Metaphor
"Kafka On The Shore". Book by Haruki Murakami, September 12, 2002.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

Haruki Murakami
Dream, Yesterday, Novelists

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven't belonged to any company or any system. It isn't easy to live like this in Japan.

Haruki Murakami
Independent, Japan, Easy

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Haruki Murakami
Musician, Novelists, Needs

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

Haruki Murakami
Thinking, Japan, Circles

It's true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose.

Haruki Murakami
Writing, Simple, Style

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

Haruki Murakami
Morning, Writing, Roots
"Marathon man". Interview with Richard Williams, www.theguardian.com. May 16, 2003.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

Haruki Murakami
Writing, Thinking, America

Sometimes I wonder why I'm a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I'm a successful writer.

Haruki Murakami
Successful, Careers, Novelists
"Haruki Murakami: 'I took a gamble and survived'". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2011.

Far away, I could hear them lapping up my brains. Like Macbeth's witches, the three lithe cats surrounded my broken head, slurping up that thick soup inside. The tips of their rough tongues licked the soft folds of my mind. And with each lick my consciousness flickered like a flame and faded away.

Haruki Murakami
Cat, Flames, Broken

What I saw wasn't a ghost. It was simply--myself. I can never forget how terrified I was that night, and whenever I remember it, this thought always springs to mind: that the most frightening thing in the world is our own self. What do you think?

Haruki Murakami
Spring, Night, Thinking

So this was how secrets got started, I thought to myself. People constructed them little by little.

Haruki Murakami
People, Secret, Littles
"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Book by Haruki Murakami, 1995.

Some things, you know, if you say them, it makes them not true?

Haruki Murakami
Knows, Ifs
"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Book by Haruki Murakami, 1994.

If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

Haruki Murakami
Thinking, People, Trying
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Kafka On The Shore”, p.204, Random House

That's all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every day. When you don't have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out - so far out you can't follow them all the way to the end.

Haruki Murakami
Thinking, Way, Time To Kill
"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Book by Haruki Murakami, August 25, 1995.

Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.

Haruki Murakami
Struggle, Opposites, Forget
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Norwegian Wood”, p.30, Random House

I've never met a girl who thinks like you." "A lot of people tell me that," she said, digging at a cuticle. "But it's the only way I know how to think. Seriously. I'm just telling you what I believe. It's never crossed my mind that my way of thinking is different from other people's. I'm not trying to be different. But when I speak out honestly, everybody thinks I'm kidding or playacting. When that happens, I feel like everything is such a pain!

Haruki Murakami
Girl, Pain, Believe

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