“I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge.”
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Haruki Murakami:
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Haruki Murakami Quotes
“No one could say how long that life would last. Whatever has form can disappear in an instant.”
Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun
Source: Kafka on the Shore
“History cannot be erased or altered. Because that would mean killing yourself.”
Source: 色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年
“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
Source: Kafka on the Shore
“I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.”
Source: Sputnik Sweetheart
“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”
Source: Norwegian Wood
Source: Sputnik Sweetheart
“Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.”
Source: Kafka on the Shore
Variant: I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is guess from what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.
Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting.”
Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun
Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)
“Chance encounters are what keep us going.”
Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)
“Only the Dead stay seventeen forever.”
Source: Norwegian Wood
Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.”
Source: After the Quake
“If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.”
Source: Norwegian Wood (1987)
“Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.”
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase
Variant: The fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.
Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1996-1997)
Context: Money had no name of course. And if it did have a name, it would no longer be money. What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.
What I Talk about When I Talk about Running (2009)
Context: I don't care about the time I run. I can try all I want, but I doubt I'll ever be able to run the way I used to. I'm ready to accept that. It's not one of your happier realities, but that's what happens when you get older. Just as I have my own role to play, so does time. And time does its job much more faithfully, much more accurately, than I ever do. Ever since time began (when was that, I wonder?), it's been moving ever forward without a moment's rest. And one of the privileges given to those who've avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honour of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.
Norwegian Wood
Context: But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.
“People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.”
After Dark
Context: People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far the maintenance of life is concerned. They are all just fuel. Advertising filler in the news paper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills; when you feed them to fire, they are just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'oh This is Kant' or 'Oh This is Yomuri evening edition' or 'Nice tits', while it burns. To the fire, they are nothing but scraps of paper. It is the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories : there is no distinction — they are all just fuel
Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, (2009)
Context: If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals... We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs. We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us -- create who we are. It is we who created the system.
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 38, And So Time Passes
Context: Time. Particles of darkness configured mysterious patterns on my retina. Patterns that degenerated without a sound, only to be replaced by new patterns. Darkness but darkness alone was shifting, like mercury in motionless space. I put a stop to my thoughts and let time pass. Let time carry me along. Carry me to where a new darkness was configuring yet newer patterns.
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 10, Counting Sheep
Context: We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze. Nonetheless, we can in the same breath deny that there is any such thing as coincidence. What's done is done, what's yet to be is clearly yet to be. In other words, sandwiched as we are between the "everything" that is behind us and the "zero" beyond us, ours is an ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence nor possibility. In actual practice, however, distinctions between the two interpretations amount to precious little. A state of affairs (as with most face-offs between interpretations) not unlike calling the same food by two different names. So much for metaphors.
Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 17, Oshima
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 10, Counting Sheep
Context: We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze. Nonetheless, we can in the same breath deny that there is any such thing as coincidence. What's done is done, what's yet to be is clearly yet to be. In other words, sandwiched as we are between the "everything" that is behind us and the "zero" beyond us, ours is an ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence nor possibility. In actual practice, however, distinctions between the two interpretations amount to precious little. A state of affairs (as with most face-offs between interpretations) not unlike calling the same food by two different names. So much for metaphors.
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 38, And So Time Passes
Context: Time. Particles of darkness configured mysterious patterns on my retina. Patterns that degenerated without a sound, only to be replaced by new patterns. Darkness but darkness alone was shifting, like mercury in motionless space. I put a stop to my thoughts and let time pass. Let time carry me along. Carry me to where a new darkness was configuring yet newer patterns.
“From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death.”
Thailand
Context: You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.
Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Source: Dance Dance Dance
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