“Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.”
Source: Norwegian Wood
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Haruki Murakami 655
Japanese author, novelist 1949Related quotes

“I am as convinced of continued existence, on the other side of death, as I am of existence here.”
Raymond, p. 375 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t80k3mq4s;view=1up;seq=417
Raymond, or Life and Death (1916)
Context: I am as convinced of continued existence, on the other side of death, as I am of existence here. It may said, you cannot be sure as you are of sensory experience. I say I can. A physicist is never limited to direct sensory impressions, he has to deal with a multitude of conceptions and things for which he has no physical organ....

“Hey oh, here I am… and here we go life's waiting to begin”
da We Don't Need to Whisper)

“Here's an idea: let's get over ourselves, buy a cherry pie, and go fall in love with life.”
The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
Context: Christians, and some Jews, claim we're in the "end times," but they've been saying this off and on for more than two thousand years. According to Hindu cosmology, we're in the Kali Yuga, a dark period when the cow of history is balanced precariously on one leg, soon to topple. Then there are our new-age friends who believe that this December we're in for a global cage-rattling which, once the dust has settled, will usher in a great spiritual awakening.
Most of this apocalyptic noise appears to be just wishful thinking on the part of people who find life too messy and uncertain for comfort, let alone for serenity and mirth. The truth, from my perspective, is that the world, indeed, is ending – and is also being reborn. It's been doing that all day, every day, forever. Each time we exhale, the world ends; when we inhale, there can be, if we allow it, rebirth and spiritual renewal. It all transpires inside of us. In our consciousness, in our hearts. All the time.
Otherwise, ours is an old, old story with an interesting new wrinkle. Throughout most of our history, nothing – not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons – has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed. The new wrinkle is that escalating advances in technology are nourishing the narcissistic ego the way chicken manure nourishes a rose bush, while exploding worldwide population is allowing its effects to multiply geometrically. Here's an idea: let's get over ourselves, buy a cherry pie, and go fall in love with life.

“Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.”

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter 8, p. 200