Haruki Murakami Quotes page 8 655 Quotes on Love, Loneliness, and the Complexities of Human Emotions

“My grandpa always said asking a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime.”

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“I wondered if she was trying to convey something to me, something she could not put into words - something prior to words that she could not grasp within herself and which therefore had no hope of ever turning into words.”

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“It is sometimes necessary for each person. Fill up with delicious food, get drunk, sing loudly and chat frivolously.”

Source: Norwegian Wood

“It's not me but the world that's deranged.”

Source: 1Q84 BOOK 3

“I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn’t last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.”

Source: 1Q84

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.”

“Everytime you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart.”

Source: Norwegian Wood

“Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another.”

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“Mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russians have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up.”

Source: After the Quake

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)

“I'm not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don't enjoy the writing, I stop.”

“If you think of someone enough, you’re sure to meet them again.”

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“There are lots of things we never understand, no matter how many years we put on, no matter how much experience we accumulate.”

Source: Samsa in Love

Haruki Murakami book The Elephant Vanishes

Source: The Elephant Vanishes

“The world is an inherently unfair place.”

“You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.”

Source: Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami book The Elephant Vanishes

Source: The Elephant Vanishes

“Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action?”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

“Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.”

“Wherever there's hope there's a trial.”

Source: 1Q84

“The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape.”

Source: 1Q84

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

“It's not right for one friend to do all the giving and the other to do all the taking: that's not read friendship.”

“Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime.”

Source: After the Quake

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

“Life: I'll never understand it.”

“The heart apparently doesn’t stop that easily.”

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Variant: Life: I’ll never understand it.

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.”

“Mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances.”

Source: 1Q84

“What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?… the thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow.”

Source: 1Q84 BOOK 1

“We live in a pretty apathetic age, yet we’re surrounded by an enormous amount of information about other people. If you feel like it, you can easily gather that information about them. Having said that, we still hardly know anything about people.”

Source: Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“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 book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“In most cases learning something essential in life requires physical pain.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“I'm your phantom dance partner. I'm your shadow. I'm not anything more.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

“What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing?”

“The world is full of ways and means to waste time.”

Source: Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. It’s like your shadow. It follows you everywhere. -Komura”

“If there’s something I can’t do but want to, I won’t relax until I’m able to do it.”

Source: After the Quake

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“So this was how secrets got started, I thought to myself. People constructed them little by little.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right.”

“I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.”

Source: 1Q84

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“Now all you can do is wait. It must be hard for you, but there is a right time for everything. Like the ebb and flow of tides. No one can do anything to change them. When it is time to wait, you must wait.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“The pillow smells like the sunlight, a precious smell.”

“In his own way, he's lived life with all the intensity he could muster.”

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer vacation, and a brand-new puppy rolled into one.”

Source: Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she's gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word that you may find south of the border. But never, ever west of the sun.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

“You can have tons of talent, but it won't necessarily keep you fed. If you have sharp instincts, through, you'll never go hungry.”