Haruki Murakami: Trending quotes (page 25)

“Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.”

“Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you”

“I go by the gut. I might not appear to have any talent but I've got plenty of gut instinct.”

“From the moment of my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way to coexist with intense pain.”

“It's just like Yeats said. In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.”

“The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts.”

“When I was little, I had this science book. There was a section on 'What would happen to the world if there was no friction?' Answer: 'Everything on earth would fly into space from the centrifugal force of revolution.' That was my mood.”

“Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.”

“What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?”

“People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues.”

“It’s precisely because of the pain, the we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it.”

“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)”

“I guess I don't really understand you yet,' I said. 'I'm not all that smart. It takes me a while to understand things. But if I do have time, I will come to understand you -- better than anyone else in the world ever can.”

“You’re optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does.”

“Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?”

“I was enveloped in numbness, and absence of feeling so deep the bottom was lost from view.”

“Whenever I get into something, I shut out everything else.”

“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.”

“The silence is so deep it hurts our ears.”