Quotes by Haruki Murakami

Like Naokuo, Im not really sure what it means to love another person. Though she meant it a little differently. I do want to try my best though. I have to, or else I wont know where to go. Like you said before, Naoko and I have to save each other. Its the only was for us to be saved!

It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the appropriate point in a conversation to say goodbye

Its basically the same in all periods of societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.And those troubling things are all you /can/ think about when youre one of the few.Thats about the size of it, she said mournfully. But maybe, if youre in a situation like that, you learn to think for yourself.Yes, but maybe what you end up thinking for yourself /about/ is all those troubling things.

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 couldnt do it even if they tried -- I told myself, Im different from other people, so the life I live will have to be different from theirs.

Allowing ourselves to become pure point of view, we hang in midair over the city. What we see now is a gigantic metropolis waking up. Commuter trains of many colors move in all directions, transporting people from place to place. Each of those under transport is a human being with a different face and mind, and at the same time each is a nameless part of the collective identity. Each is simultaneously a self-contained whole and a mere part. Handling this dualism of theirs skillfully and advantageously, they perform their morning rituals with deftness and precision: brushing teeth, shaving, tying neckties, applying lipstick. They check the morning news on TV, exchange words with their families, eat, defecate.

You can see a persons whole life in the cancer they get.

My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories - not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my fathers generation. Its a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.

Team sports arent my thing. I find it easier to pick something up if I can do it at my own speed. And you dont need a partner to go running, you dont need a particular place, like in tennis, just a pair of trainers.

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.

I didnt read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature, I just wanted to do something else.

You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.

I get up early in the morning, 4 oclock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, thats enough. In the afternoon, I run.

Ive run the Boston Marathon 6 times before. I think the best aspects of the marathon are the beautiful changes of the scenery along the route and the warmth of the peoples support. I feel happier every time I enter this marathon.

Young people these days dont trust anything at all. They want to be free.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, its not imagination. Its just a way of watching.

Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.

“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 cant be measured.At least by the person whos waiting.”

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

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