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Haruki Murakami Quotes - Page 37

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You know what it’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake?

You know what it’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake?

Haruki Murakami
Fall, Trying, Wide Awake
Haruki Murakami (1994). “The Elephant Vanishes”, Vintage

The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring - and all of the acts carried out - on this earth. But the moon remained silent; it told no stories.

Haruki Murakami
Moon, Stories, Earth

I'm a writer, not a professional runner. It's fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

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

I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, “It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.” I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.

Haruki Murakami
Jobs, Lying, Writing

Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.

Haruki Murakami
Life, Dream, Moving
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from May 23, 2015

So once you're dead there's just nothing? Mari: Basically... Korogi: I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff. I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It's so much easier to just believe in reincarnation.

Haruki Murakami
Believe, Thinking, Body

I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times." Takahashi swings his trombone case from his right shoulder to his left. Then he says, "It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don't think you have a particularly dark character.

Haruki Murakami
Character, Dark, Thinking

I was thirty-seven then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport.

Haruki Murakami
Clouds, Airports, Seven
Haruki Murakami (2004). “Vintage Murakami”, Vintage

On any given day, something claims our attention. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days then go back to wherever they came from... to darkness. We've got all these wells dug in our hearts. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth.

Haruki Murakami
Children, Heart, Two

And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. 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
Beautiful, Lonely, Stars
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Aug 06, 2014

Instead of things I'm good at, it might be faster to list the things I can't do. I can't cook or clean the house. My room's a mess, and I'm always losing things. I love music, but I can't sing a note. I'm clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of direction is the pits, and I can't tell left from right half the time. When I get angry, I tend to break things. Plates and pencils, alarm clocks. Later on I regret it, but at the time I can't help myself. I have no money in the bank. I'm bashful for no reason, and I have hardly any friends to speak of.

Haruki Murakami
Regret, House, Half

I spent thirty-three years in another man's shadow. I went everywhere he went, I helped him with everything he did. I was in a sense a part of him. When you live like that for a long time, you gradually lose track of what it is you yourself really want out of life

Haruki Murakami
Men, Years, Long

Don't tell me anymore. You should have your dream, as the old woman told you to. I understand how you feel, but if you put those feelings into words they will turn into lies. (from Thailand)

Haruki Murakami
Dream, Lying, Should Have
Haruki Murakami (2011). “After The Quake”, p.78, Random House

Have your dream...What you need now more than anything is discipline. Cast off mere words. Words turn into stone. (from Thailand)

Haruki Murakami
Dream, Discipline, Needs

I just gave them a little scare. A touch of psychological terror. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, true terror is the kind that men feel towards their imagination. (from Super-frog Saves Tokyo)

Haruki Murakami
Men, Imagination, Scare

Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me.

Haruki Murakami
Moving, Reading, Sitting
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Sep 13, 2016

I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. Just as you take care of the birds and the fields every morning, every morning I wind my own spring. I give it some 36 good twists by the time I've got up, brushed my teeth, shaved, eaten breakfast, changed my clothes, left the dorm, and arrived at the university. I tell myself, "OK, let's make this day another good one." I hadn't noticed before, but they tell me I talk to myself a lot these days. Probably mumbling to myself while I wind my spring.

Haruki Murakami
Morning, Spring, Wind

Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

Haruki Murakami
Loss, Sorrow, Despair
"Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World". Book by Haruki Murakami, September 1991.

What’s more, you’re loads better than you think you are.” “So why is it I get to thinking that way?” I puzzled. “That’s because you’re only half-living.” she said briskly. “The other half is still untapped somewhere.

Haruki Murakami
Thinking, Half, Way
"A Wild Sheep Chase". Book by Haruki Murakami, 1989.

Where are you now?’ Where was I now? Gripping the receiver, I raised my hand and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.

Haruki Murakami
Eye, Hands, Ideas
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Mar 30, 2016

That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution

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

I stare at this ceaseless, rushing crowd and imagine a time a hundred years from now. In a hundred years everybody here-me included-will have disappeared from the face of the earth and turned into ashes or dust. A weird thought, but everything in front of me starts to seem unreal, like a gust of wind could blow it all away.

Haruki Murakami
Blow, Dust, Years
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Kafka On The Shore”, p.59, Random House

It feels like everything's been decided in advance that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It's like my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch.

Haruki Murakami
Hurt, Thinking, Who I Am

Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person’s heart and dissolve it.

Haruki Murakami
Heart, Bottles, Acid

I'm not sure if I could tell the difference—between just staring into space and thinking. We're usually thinking all the time, aren't we? Not that we live in order to think, but the opposite isn't true either—that we think in order to live. I believe, contrary to Descartes, that we sometimes think in order not to be. Staring into space might unintentionally have the opposite effect.

Haruki Murakami
Believe, Thinking, Order

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