Haruki Murakami Quotes

Haruki Murakami

Biography

Type: Essayist, Translator

Born: January 12, 1949, Kyoto, Japan

Died:

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1949. He grew up in Kobe and then moved to Tokyo, where he attended Waseda University. After college, Murakami opened a small jazz bar, which he and his wife ran for seven years.

Haruki Murakami Quotes

Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's
Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time.

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to
Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.

That’s how stories happen - with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

For darkness terrifies. It swallows you, warps you, nullifies you. Who alive can possibly profess confidence in darkness? In the dark, you can't see.

I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star.
It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.
Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.

If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.

I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once.

here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.

If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.

I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.

Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.

Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn't seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved.

There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.

If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings.

Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn't make it a living breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.

If she did experience sex-or something close to it-in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.

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

The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky.

It's a dark, cool, quiet place. A basement in your soul. And that place can sometimes be dangerous to the human mind. I can open the door and enter that darkness, but I have to be very careful. I can find my story there. Then I bring that thing to the surface, into the real world.

I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.

Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.

That's how it is with art. Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning are incapable of such writing.

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

You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.

Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.

My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart...

I love pop culture - the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that.
That's why I said I don't like elitism.

Writing things was important, wasn't it? Nakata asked.
'Yes, it was. The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is completely meaningless.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people. Other people have their own value to live by, and the same holds true with me.

Have your dream...What you need now more than anything is discipline. Cast off mere words. Words turn into stone. (from Thailand)

I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.

It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

Words left their mouths to hang frozen in midair.

Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us.

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

Every person should decide for himself how happy, or unhappy, our society might be.

Everybody has to start somewhere. You have your whole future ahead of you. Perfection doesn't happen right away.

Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind for yourself.

I think most readers would say the same. Most would choose Midori. And the protagonist, of course, chooses her in the end. But some part of him is always in the other world and he cannot abandon it. It’s a part of him, an essential part. All human beings have a sickness in their minds. That space is a part of them.

Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.

Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant.

I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy.

Mr. Nakata, this world is a terribly violent place. And nobody can escape the violence. Please keep that in mind. You can't be too cautious. The same holds true for cats and human beings.

The real world - where I probably could never be happy, and never get anywhere.

You know, Junpei, everything in the world has its reasons for doing what it does.

Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence are one.
The pain is an anchor, mooring me here.

Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you.

For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a "Reserved" sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I'd never see her again.

Maybe it's just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows - maybe even tomorrow.

Quizás aun no te comprenda. Pero, con un poco de tiempo, llegaré a entenderte. Y no habrá nadie en el mundo que te comprenda mejor que yo.

Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but loose you.

Like you're riding a train at night across some vast plain, and you
catch a glimpse of a tiny light in a window of a farmhouse. In an
instant it's sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes. But
if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, just
barely for a few moments.

Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.

Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.

In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.

Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.

When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action.

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

As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.

People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies.

I don’t know what it means to live.

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.

My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year.

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.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

It's easy to forget things you don't need anymore.

When you are used to the kind of life -of never getting anything you want- you stop knowing what it is you want.

When someone is trying very hard to get something, they don't. And when they're running away from something as hard as they can, it usually catches up with them.

I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I'm running? I don't have a clue.

People have their own reasons for dying. It might look simple, but it never is. It's just like a rock. What's above ground is only a small part of it. But if you start pulling, it keeps coming and coming. The human mind dwells deep in darkness. Only the person himself knows the real reason, and maybe not even then.

I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all.

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.

Only by learning the truth - whatever that truth might be - could people be given the right kind of power.

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.

Snow floated down every once in a while, but it was frail snow, like a memory fading into the distance.

Es decir..., lo que yo creo es que el hombre piensa en el significado de la vida porque sabe con certeza que va morir algún día. (...) Nadie sabe lo que va a ocurrir. Por eso nosotros, para evolucionar necesitamos la muerte.

It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.

In his or her own way, everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.

Don't blame me. That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution.

There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.

No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning.

People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.

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

Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.

That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive.

I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die,” she said. “I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live.

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

Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used.

A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything’s going to be all right. you’ve made it past Dead Man’s Curve and you’re out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.

I find myself thinking about my ongoing existence as a human being and the path that lies ahead of me. Though of course these thoughts lead to but one place - death.

If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.

The Boss is an honorable man. After the Lord, the most godly person I've ever met."
"You've met God?"
"Certainly. I telephone Him every night.

In the name of God, they stole her time and her freedom, putting shackles on her heart. They preached about God's kindness, but preached twice as much about his wrath and intolerance.

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.

This is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope.

Wherever there's hope there's a trial.

Hey, Mr. Nakata. Gramps. Fire! Flood! Earthquake! Revolution! Godzilla's on the loose! Get up!

Sheep hurt my father, and through my father, sheep have also hurt me.

In those days I used to talk to myself as if reciting poetry.

You know what I should do?" Hoshino asked excited. "Of course," the cat said. "What'd I tell you? Cats know everything. Not like dogs.

But hell, you've gotta work with what you've got.

It was simply one of those things that remain as an “exceptional but interesting” episode in life.

You lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world that’s inside you.

Kitąsyk užsimerkęs paliesdavau kokią pažįstamą knygą ir giliai į plaučius įtraukdavau jos kvapą. Vien šito pakakdavo, kad pasijausčiau laimingas.

We returned to the hotel and had intercourse. I like that word intercourse. It poses only a limited range of possibilities.

I could feel her breasts up against my stomach. I wanted a beer real bad.

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.

This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be a
long process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf.

There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees.

The years nineteen and twenty are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older.

I think serious readers of books are 5% of the population. If there are good TV shows or a World Cup or anything, that 5% will keep on reading books very seriously, enthusiastically. And if a society banned books, they would go into the forest and remember all the books. So I trust in their existence. I have confidence.

Sumire was so bereft of household goods the place looked deserted. There weren't any curtains in the windows and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a gang of intellectual refugees.

Mirtis egzistuoja ne kaip gyvenimo priešingybė, o kaip jos dalis.

I don't think I'd want Mickey Mouse pimping for me anyway.

It was far too hot to think about complicated matters.

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.

For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured.At least by the person who's waiting.

Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart.

Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.

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

I guess time doesn't flow in order, does it - A, B, C, D? It just sort of goes where it feels like going.

The passage of time will usually extract the venom of most things and render them harmless

Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.

Samsa certainly had no idea what lay ahead. He was in the dark about everything: the future, of course, but the present and the past as well . What was right, and what was wrong? Just learning how to dress was a riddle.

Killing time is not an easy job

The world is full of ways and means to waste time

The journey I'm taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart.

He would eventually have to pass through the forest, but he felt no fear. Of course - the forest was inside him, he knew, and it made him who he was.

We do not hold that doctrine gives rise to awakening but rather that the individual awakenings come first.

Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.

Colors shone with exceptional clarity in the rain. The ground was a deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, the people wrapped in yellow looking like special spirits that were allowed to wander over the earth on rainy mornings only.

Miu let age naturally rise to the surface, accepted it for what it was, and made her peace with it.

With her slim, tight figure, a little makeup and she'd easily pass for late twenties. But she didn't make the effort. Miu let age naturally rise to the surface, accepted it for what it was, and made her peace with it.

I watched the moon alone, unable to share his cold beauty with anyone.

I wasn't in love with her. And she didn't love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What I sought was the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial. I had no idea what that was. But I wanted to thrust my hand right inside her body and touch it, whatever it was.

Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm that I had ever heard.

Once you’re lost, you panic. You’re in total despair, not knowing what to do. I hate it when that happens. Sex can be a real pain that way, ‘cause when you get in the mood all you can think about is what’s right under your nose - that’s sex, all right.

Sex with a married woman ten years his senior was stress free and fulfilling, because it couldn't lead to anything

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

Not just beautiful, though-the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.

Vlinders zijn de meest vergankelijke, gracieuze schepsels ter wereld. Ze worden uit het niets geboren, verlangen stilletjes naar iets heel kleins en beperkts, om uiteindelijk weer als in het niets te verdwijnen.

There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.

O coração humano é como um pássaro nocturno. Espera por qualquer coisa em silêncio e, quando chega a altura, levanta voo e vai direito a ela.

The heart apparently doesn’t stop that easily.

Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart.

In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality.

It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.

it occurred to me what a simple thing reality is, how easy it is to make it work. It's just reality. Just housework. Just a home. Like running a simple machine. Once you learn to run it, it's just a matter of repetition. You push this button and pull that lever. You adjust a gauge, put on the lid, set the timer. The same thing, over and over.

If only I could fall
sound asleep and wake up in my old reality!

As soon as I sat down across from her, she ordered me to put the entire contents of my pants pockets on the table. I did as I was told, saying nothing. My reality seemed to have left me and was now wandering around nearby. I hope it can find me, I thought.

You’re here,” I continued. “At least you look as if you’re here. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe it’s just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you’ve hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys.

But you knoe, she's right. Every single day, each time I see her face, see her, it's utterly precious.

To conserve energy, her little planet stopped spinning.

What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities.

Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize.

The better you were able to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality.

When you prick a person with a needle, red blood comes out- that's the real world.

Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you're no longer talking about reality. You might think that -by following language and a logic that appears consistent- you're able to exclude that aspect of reality, but it will always be lying in wait for you, ready to take its revenge.

There's no longer any place for a Big Brother in this real world of ours. Instead, these so-called Little People have come on the scene. Interesting verbal contrast, don't you think?

The best way to think about reality, I had decided, was to get as far away from it as possible.

I'm not afraid to die. What I'm afraid of is having reality get the better of me, of having reality leave me behind.

Where I'm living is not a storybook world. It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.

Maybe the world was like a revolving door, it occurred to him as his consciousness was fading away. And which section you ended up in was just a matter of where your foot happened to fall.

Listen up - there's no war that will end all wars.

Can'ttrustpeople. Won'tdoanygood. They'llkillyoueverytime. They'llkilleachother. They'llkilleveryone.

Artists are those who can evade the verbose.

People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you might strike out, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That's what can move the world. That's art.

This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: 'At the time, no one knew what was coming.

The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things they don't want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can’t turn away. Their memories are passed on from parent to child. That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.

To be a Russian writer at the end of the nineteenth century must have meant bearing an inescapably bitter fate. The more they tried to escape from Russia, the more deeply Russia swallowed them.

History cannot be erased or altered.Because that would mean killing yourself.

We had two black ski masks in the glove compartment. Why my wife owned a shotgun, I had no idea. Or ski masks. Neither of us had ever skied. But she didn't explain and I didn't ask. Married life is weird, I felt.

I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.

But you know Hajime, some feelings cause us pain because they remain.

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.

When pain comes to me, I leave my physical self. It's just like quietly slipping into the next room when someone you don't want to meet comes along. I can do it very naturally. I recognize that the pain has come to my body; I feel the existence of the pain; but I am not there. I am in the next room.

Lo que quiero decir es que el dolor se vuelve crónico. Engullido por la vida diaria, uno deja de saber cuáles son las heridas. Pero están ahí. Así son las heridas: no se pueden coger y mostrar; las únicas que se pueden mostrar son las heridas menores.

Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.

Tiesą, kaip tu ir sakei, dažniausiai lydi stiprus skausmas. O beveik niekas netrokšta skausmingos tiesos. Žmonėms reikia gražios ir jaukios pasakos, kuri leistų jiems bent truputį giliau pajusti savo gyvenimo prasmę. Būtent todėl atsiranda religijos.

What I mean to say is probably something like this: any single human being, no matter what kind of person he or she may be, is all caught up in the tentacles of this animal like a giant octopus, and is getting sucked into the darkness. You can put any kind of spin on it you like, but you end up with the same unbearable spectacle.

E se a minha vida não fôr mais do que um processo de materialização, através do qual eu dou forma a imagens latentes que vivem adormecidas em mim?

I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.

The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.

Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn't control you-you should control them.

In dreams begins responsiblities.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But it was not until much later that I was able to get any real sleep. In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.

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 have these realistic dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And for a while I can't work out what's real and what isn't... That kind of feeling. Do you have any idea what I'm saying?

It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.

They say it's a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of writers - and I'm talking the most talented - are able to pull off the irrational synthesis you find in dreams.

I don't dream. Come to think of it, i haven't had any dreams in a long time.

Dreams are the kind of things you can borrow and lend out.

Dreams are things from the past. They aren't from the future. That wasn't you imprisoned there. You imprison your dreams. You understand?

Yeah, I'd say. But I wasn't convinced.

People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream,

You're afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, and dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination. But you can't suppress dreams.

It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.

Las cosas fluyen hacia donde tienen que fluir, y por más que te esfuerces e intentes hacerlo lo mejor posible, cuando llega el momento de herir a alguien lo hieres. La vida es así.

Tendencies. Yougottendencies. Soevenifyoudideverythingoveragain, yourwholelife, yougottendenciestodojustwhatyoudid, alloveragain. -The Sheep Man.

There are all kinds of things we have to deal with in life,' Eri finally said. 'And one thing always seems to connect with another. You try to solve one problem, only to find that another one you hadn't anticipated arises instead. It's not that easy to get free of them. That's true for you - and for me, too.

If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn't, go for the one without form. That's my rule.

Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep.

Dying is the only way/ For you to float free: / Nomonhan

I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free?

The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself.

Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.

Opera lovers may be the narrowest people in the world.

Rock and roll was my favorite, but before long I grew to enjoy Shinamoto's brand of classical music. This was music from another world, which had its appeal, but more than that I loved it because she was a part of that world.

I'm only a girl with metaphysical soles.

The music world is where child prodigies go to die.

The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.

Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder's frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain.

People change,' Sara said.
'True enough,' Tsukuru said. 'People do change. And no matter how close we once were, and how much we opened up to each other, maybe neither of us knew anything substantial about the other.

We keep moving. And as we do, the things around us, well, they disappear.

It wasn't like there was some obvious change. Actually, the problem was more a lack of change. Nothing about her had changed - the way she spoke, her clothes, the topics she chose to talk about, her opinions - they were all the same as before. Their relationship was like a pendulum gradually grinding to a halt, and he felt out of synch.

When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. ‘Mythomania’ is the word for it.

People lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off and turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned.

There are always far more people in the world who make things worse, rather than help out.

Aren't you afraid of dying?
Not really. I've watched lots of good-for-nothing, worthless people die, and if people like that can do it, then I should be able to handle it.

Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I'm talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean.

True, luck may rule over parts of a person's life and luck may cast patches of shadow across the ground of our being, but where there's a WILL- much less a strong will to swim thirty laps or run twenty kilometers - there's a way to overcome most any trouble with whatever stepladders you have around.

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.

People who's freedom is taken away always end up hating somebody. Right? I know I don't want to live like that.

That sounds good. But I don't like to be tied down in one place. I want to be free-to go to where I want, when I want, and be able to think about whatever I want.

And I really wanted to see you, too," she said. "When I couldn’t see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really need you. You’re a part of me; I’m a part of you.

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.

I don't have a thing,Tengo said, except my soul.

It was a strange feeling, like touching a void.

In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.

It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she was gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.

There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can't. And time passing is one thing that can't be redone. Come this tar, and you can't come back.

It was as if-this is something I thought of only later, of course-she was gently peeling bcd one layer after another hat covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.

No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don't like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I can.

Passion can’t sustain itself
forever.

It was as natural and obvious to me as breathing. So I assumed that everyone else was doing it too. When I realized that everyone else was not doing it - that they couldn't do it even if they tried - I told myself, 'I'm different from other people, so the life I live will have to be different from theirs.

The laugh left a bitter taste in our mouths, but we laughed out all the same.

With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.

You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath.

At some point the future becomes reality. And then it quickly becomes the past.

What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me.

Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come from differences in their reproductive system

Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.

Think it over carefully. This is very important," I say, "because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of the mind. Do you follow? When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind.

The mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed - your self.

That's the way it is with the mind. Nothing is ever equal. Like a river, as it flows, the course changes with the terrain.

The feeling of the wind, the sound of rushing water, the sense of sunlight breaking through the clouds, the colors of flowers as the seasons changed - everything around him felt changed, as if they had all been recast.

I've been clinging to this world like a discarded shell of an insect stuck to a branch, about to be blown off forever by a gust of wind.

No truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and
learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning.

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.

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