Haruki Murakami Quotes

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655 Quotes on Love, Loneliness, and the Complexities of Human Emotions

“But you know Hajime, some feelings cause us painthey remain.”

“Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.”

“When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it.”

“What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get in the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things.”

“Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.”

“Once you let yourself grow close to someone, cutting the ties could be painful.”

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

“It's my motto for life. 'Walk slowly; drink lots of water.”

“People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring.”

“I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you
realize.”

“Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.”

“It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

“Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?"
"I guess it depends on how you die.”

“The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be.”

“Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”

“Everything just blows me away.”

“A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born but you can choose how you die.”

“Results aside, the ability to have complete faith in another human being is one of the finest qualities a person can possess.”

“My shadow is only half of what it should be."
"Everyone has their shortcomings.”

“Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn't fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That's what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries.”

“You might think you made a new world or a new self, but your old self is always gonna be there, just below the surface, and if something happens, it'll stick its head out and say 'Hi.' You don't seem to realize that. You were made somewhere else.”

“For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly.
From something like that or it doesn't begin at all.”

“We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.”

“I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing.”

“Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.”

“Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.”

“Things can be seen better in the darkness," he said, as if he had just seen into her mind. "But the longer you spend in the dark, the harder it becomes to return to the world aboveground where the light is”

“I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel”

“The things she most wanted to tell him would lose their meaning the moment she put them into words.”

“When it's raining like this," said Naoko, "it feels as if we're the only ones in the world. I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us could stay together.”

“Reality was utterly coolheaded and utterly lonely.”

“Understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings.”

“You got to know your limits. Once is enough, but you got to learn. A little caution never hurt anyone. A good woodsman has only one scar on him. No more, no less.”

“Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice.”

“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?”

“Everything, everything seemed once-upon-a-time.”

“Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.”

“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.”

“I don't know -- maybe the world has two different kinds of people, and for one kind the world is this completely logical, rice pudding place, and for the other it's all hit-or-miss macaroni gratin.”

“I'm kind of a low-key guy. The spotlight doesn't suit me. I'm more of a side dish--cole slaw or French fries or a Wham! backup singer.”

“Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion”

“Genius or fool, you don't live in the world alone. You can hide underground or you can build a wall around yourself, but somebody's going to come along and screw up the works.”

“I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside.”

“All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world.”

“This person, this self, this me, finally, was made somewhere else. Everything had come from somewhere else, and it would all go somewhere else. I was nothing but a pathway for the person known as me.”

“I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.”

“I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas - if I like these things, why should I apologize?”

“We truly believed in something back then, and we knew we were the kind of people capable of believing in something - with all our hearts. And that kind of hope will never simply vanish.”

“I realize now that the reality of things is not something you convey to people but something you make.”