Quotes by Haruki Murakami

Its not so easy for people to end their own lives. Its not like in the movies. There, they do it like nothing, no pain, and its all over, theyre dead. The reality is not like that. You lie in bed for ten years with the piss oozing out of you.

Alls well that ends well.Assuming theres an end somewhere, Aomame said.Tamaru formed some short creases near his mouth that were faintly reminiscent of a smile. There has to be an end somewhere. Its just that nothings labeled This is the end. Is the top rung of a ladder labeled This is the last rung. Please dont step higher than this?Aomame shook her head.Its the same thing, Tamaru said.Aomame said, If you use common sense and keep your eyes open, it becomes clear enough where the end is.Tamaru nodded. And even if it doesnt -- he made a falling gesture with his finger -- the end is right there.

There are three reasons I failed. Not enough training. Not enough training. And not enough training.

If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldnt afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when theyre seventeen.

Okay, let’s put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it’s alright if I don’t sleep with you. What I’m saying is I’d like to be as fair as possible. I don’t want to force anything on anybody, any more than I’d want anything forced on me. It’s enough that I feel your presence or see your commas swirling around me.

My father always told me: Give somebody a hand and hell take an arm.

Im safe inside this container called me.

What happens when people open their hearts?They get better.

everything in the world has its reasons for doing what it does. The wind has its reasons. We just dont notice as we go about our lives. But then, at some point, we are made to notice. The wind envelops you with a certain purpose in mind, and it rocks you. The wind knows everything thats inside you. And not just the wind. Everything, including a stone. They all know us very well. From top to bottom. It only occurs to us at certain times. And all we can do is go with those things. As we take them in, we survive, and deepen.

Beautiful day out there,” I said, perching on the stool and crossing my legs. “It’s autumn, Sunday, great weather, and crowded everywhere you go. Relaxing indoors like this is the best thing you can do on such a nice day. It’s exhausting to get into those crowds. And the air is bad. I mostly do laundry on Sundays—wash the stuff in the morning, hang it out on the roof of my dorm, take it in before the sun goes down, do a good job of ironing it. I don’t mind ironing at all. There’s a special satisfaction in making wrinkled things smooth. And I’m pretty good at it, too. Of course, I was lousy at it at first. I put creases in everything. After a month of practice, though, I knew what I was doing. So Sunday is my day for laundry and ironing. I couldn’t do it today, of course. Too bad: wasted a perfect laundry day.

The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to to forget all that. Dont you agree? Two-thirds of earths surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface: the skin.

...somewhere, on some subterranean level, her darkness and his may have connected.

In truly deep darkness, all kinds of strange things were possible.

There was a time when my soul was wandering through the deepest darkness…

It was nothing but a hole, a mouth open wide. You could lean over the edge and peer down to see nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world’s darkness had been boiled down to their ultimate density.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

As I mentioned briefly on the phone, the best thing about the Air Chrysalis is that its not an imitation of anyone. It has absolutely none of the usual new writers sense of I want to be another so-and-so. the syle, for sure, is rough,and the writing is clumsy. She even gets the title wrong: shes confusing chrysalis and cocoon. You could pick it apart completely if you wanted to. But the story itself has real power: it draws you in. the overall plots is a fantasy, but the descriptive details is incredibly real.The balance between the two is excellent. I dont know if words like originality or Inevitability fit here, and I suppose I might agree if someone insisted its not at that level, but finally, after you work your way through the thing, with all its faults, it leaves a real impression- it gets to you in some strange, inexplicable way that may be a little disturbing.

Good style happens in one of two ways: the writer either has an inborn talent or is willing to work herself to death to get it.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. Youll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you wont remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You wont even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you wont be the same person who walked in. Thats what this storms all about.

Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living (I suppose there are a few exceptions), they think that the world of life (or whatever) is this place where everything is (or is supposed to be) basically logical and consistent.... Its like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there youve got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You cant tell whats going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobodys looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think its natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me thats just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin.