Quotes by Haruki Murakami

No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist.

Still, this was on the order of a minor miracle, running across someone to whom you can express your feeling so clearly, so completely. Most people go their entire lives without meeting a person like that. It would have been mistake to label this love. It was more like total empathy.

No matter what the situation may be, I still take pleasure in witnessing the joy of others.

I felt guilty that I hadnt thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think of it this way: two and a half years have gone by since it happened, and Kizuki is still seventeen years old. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. What I want to say is this: Im going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I cant explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say.

A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while Im driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of-- that a certain type of perfection can only be realised through a limitless accumulation of imperfect.

Oshimas silent for a time as he gazes at the forest, eyes narrowed. Birds are flitting from one branch to the next. His hands are clasped behind his head. I know how you feel, he finally says. But this is something you have to work out on your own. Nobody can help you. Thats what loves all about, Kafka. Youre the one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.

We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever.

Are there any capitalist cats? Nakata asked

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.

If I sound as if Im always predicting ominous things, its because Im a pragmatist. I use deductive reasoning to generalize, and I suppose this sometimes ends up sounding like unlucky prophecies. You know why? Because realitys just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life. You have to only open a newspaper on any given day and weigh the good news versus the bad, and youll see what I mean.

In any case, suffice it to say I enjoyed hearing about faraway places. I had stocked up a whole store of these places, like a bear getting ready for hibernation. I’d close my eyes, and streets would materialize, rows of houses take shape. I could hear people’s voices, feel the gentle, steady rhythm of their lives, those people so distant, whom I’d probably never know.

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.

Girls who are on top of things must have three hundred ways of responding to tired thirty-five-year-old divorced men.

The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonists weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what Im getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex being a great example. Oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of laziness or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results....[But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.

There. My ears are all dead. Now you try.Three times I repeated the movements shed made. Slowly, carefully, but nothing left me with the impression that my ears had died. The wine was rapidly circulating through my system.I do believe that my ears arent dying properly, I said, disappointed.She shook her head. Thats okay. If your ears dont need to die, theres nothing wrong with them not dying.

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

Even at a time like this, the street is bright enough and filled with people coming and going—people with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward.

The sky both exists and doesn’t exist. It has substance and at the same time doesn’t. And we merely accept that vast expanse and drink it in.

I really should have died then, Tsukuru often told himself. Then this world, the one in the here and now, wouldnt exist. It was a captivating, bewitching thought. The present world wouldnt exist, and reality would no longer be real. As far as this world was concerned, he would simply no longer exist—just as this world would no longer exist for him.

To him, they looked like shadows that his wife had left behind. Size 7 shadows of his wife hung there in long rows, layer upon layer, as if someone had gathered and hung up samples of the infinite possibilities (or at least the theoretically infinite possibilities) implied in the existence of a human being.