Quotes by Haruki Murakami

Writing things was important, wasnt it? Nakata asked.Yes, it was. The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is completely meaningless.

Or maybe that’s what it’s all about: this religion’s substance is its lack of substance. In McLuhanesque terms, the medium is the message. Some people might find that cool.”“McLuhanesque?”“Hey, look, even I read a book now and then,” Ayumi protested. “McLuhan was ahead of his time. He was so popular for a while that people tend not to take him seriously, but what he had to say was right.”“In other words, the package itself is the contents. Is that it?”“Exactly. The characteristics of the package determine the nature of the contents, not the other way around.

In ancient times people werent just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everybody in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing other half.

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

There were times he thought it would have been far better to never have known. Yet he continued to return to his core principle: that, in every situation, knowledge was better than ignorance. However agonizing, it was necessary to confront the facts. Only through knowing could a person become strong.

Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasnt going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.

So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal theloss, no matter how important the thing thats stolen from us - thatssnatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completelychanged, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue toplay out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to theend of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails offbehind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of insurmountable emptiness...Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost.Or at least there exists a silent place where everything candisappear, melting together in a single, overlapping figure. And aswe live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threadsattached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried tobring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing themcloser, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their livesare fleeting.

In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion, she repeats, making sure of it. If she had paper and pencil, it wouldnt surprise me if she wrote it down. So what does that really mean? In simple terms. I think it over. It takes me a while to gather my thoughts, but she waits patiently. I think it means, I say, that chance encounters are what keep us going. In simple terms.

Its 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.

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

Things change everyday. With each new dawn, it is not the same world as before. And you’re not the same person you were either.

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

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.

Silence. How long it lasted, I couldnt tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasnt 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.

I guess time doesnt 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

Every story has a time to be told

Time does not expand.But time is actually expanding, isnt it? You yourself said that time adds up.Thats only because time needed for transit has decreased. The sum total of time doesnt change. Its only that you can see more movies.