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Haruki Murakami Quotes - Page 35

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I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you'd quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.

I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you'd quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.

Haruki Murakami
Running, Exercise, Everyday

What's really important here," I whispered loudly to myself,"is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have

Haruki Murakami
People, Important, Pithy

Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly’s wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose.

Haruki Murakami
Dream, Butterfly, Artist

Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone's soul being blown to the far side of the world.

Haruki Murakami
Sky, Bird, Soul

But still," Ayumi said, "it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness." "You may be right," Aomame said, "But it's too late to trade it in for another one.

Haruki Murakami
Kindness, Too Late, World

Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come from differences in their reproductive system

Haruki Murakami
Men, Differences, Psychological
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jul 20, 2012

Probably." "Again with the probablys." "A world full of probablys," she said.

Haruki Murakami
World, Said

He sometimes wondered if she had become involved with him just so that she could cry in someone's arms. Maybe she can't cry alone, and that's why she needs me.

Haruki Murakami
Needs, Arms, Sometimes
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”, p.60, Random House

Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match.

Haruki Murakami
Hips, Sophisticated, Made

my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and waiting for it to pass. And it would pass -- but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.

Haruki Murakami
Pain, Eye, Heart

I saw that she was crying. Before I knew it, I was kissing her. Others on the platform were staring at us, but I didn't care about such things anymore. We were alive, she and I. And all we had to think about was continuing to live.

Haruki Murakami
Kissing, Thinking, Alive

No matter how clear things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution, as there was in math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a problem into another form. Depending on the nature and the direction of the problem, a solution might be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that solution in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. It served no immediate practical purpose, but it contained a possibility.

Haruki Murakami
Real, Cutting, Math
"Town of Cats" by Haruki Murakami, www.newyorker.com. September 5, 2011.

A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything’s going to be all right. you’ve made it past Dead Man’s Curve and you’re out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.

Haruki Murakami
Stars, Past, Men

That's wrong," she declared. "Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it? But school doesn't know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It's no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down.

Haruki Murakami
Crush, School, Drawing
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jul 13, 2015

As long as I stared at the clock, at least the world remained in motion. Not a very consequential world, but in motion nonetheless. And as long as I knew the world was still in motion, I knew I existed. Not a very consequential existence, but an existence nonetheless. It struck me as wanting that someone should confirm his own existence only by the hands of an electric wall clock. There had to be a more cognitive means of confirmation. But try as I might, nothing less facile came to mind.

Haruki Murakami
Wall, Mean, Hands

You know what girls are like. They turn twenty or twenty-one and all of a sudden they start having these concrete ideas. They get super realistic. And when that happens, everything that seemed so sweet and lovable about them begins to look ordinary and depressing.

Haruki Murakami
Girl, Sweet, Depressing

Everybody feels safe belonging not to the excluded minority but to the excluding majority. You think, Oh, I’m glad that’s not me. It’s basically the same in all periods in all societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.

Haruki Murakami
Thinking, Majority, Minorities

Waiting for your answer is one of the most painful things I have ever been through. At least let me know whether or not I hurt you.

Haruki Murakami
Hurt, Waiting, Answers
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Norwegian Wood”, p.54, Random House

In his or her own way, everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.

Haruki Murakami
Loneliness, Looks, Afternoon
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Norwegian Wood”, p.103, Random House

He appeared before me and departed. We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb.

Haruki Murakami
Departed, Mind, Depth

Something in her small eyes caught the sunlight and glistened, like a glacier on the faraway face of a mountain.

Haruki Murakami
Eye, Mountain, Faces
Haruki Murakami (2011). “1Q84:”, p.128, Random House

You can’t look too far ahead. Do that and you’ll lose sight of what you’re doing and stumble. I’m not saying you should focus solely on the details right in front of you, mind you. You’ve got to look ahead a bit or else you’ll bump into something. You’ve got to conform to the proper order and at the same time keep an eye out for what’s ahead. That’s critical, no matter what you’re doing.

Haruki Murakami
Eye, Sight, Order

It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.

Haruki Murakami
Reality, Everyday, Ordinary
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jan 31, 2016

Inside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. Everything that had accumulated over the years-- all he had seen, all the words he has spoken, all the values he had held-- all of it coalesced into one solid, thick pillar in his heart, the core of which was spinning like a potter's wheel. Wordlessly, Tengo observed the scene, as if watching the destruction and rebirth of a planet.

Haruki Murakami
Heart, Years, Twenties

I was reborn," she said, her hot breath brushing his ear. "You were reborn," Tengo said. "Because I died once." "You died once," Tengo repeated. "On a night when there was a cold rain falling," she said. "Why did you die?" "So I would be reborn like this." "You would be reborn," Tengo said. "More or less," she whispered quietly. "In all sorts of forms.

Haruki Murakami
Rain, Fall, Night
Haruki Murakami (2011). “1Q84:”, p.113, Random House

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