Quotes by Ryū Murakami

And sometimes ignorance is even harder to deal with than deliberate evil.

Every time he studied this instrument, with its slender, gleaming steel rod that tapered down to such needle-like sharpness, he wondered why it was necessary to have things like this in the world. If it were truly only for chopping ice, youd think a completely different design might do. The people who produce and sell things like this dont understand, he thought. They dont realize that some of us break out in a cold sweat at just a glimpse of that shiny, pointed tip.

Children would struggle desperately to feel love for their parents. Rather than hate a parent, in fact, theyd choose to hate themselves. Love and violence became so intertwined for them that when they grew up and got into relationships, only hysteria could set their hearts at ease.

Memories aret like words; theyre soft and gooey. Covered with a sticky slime, like a penis after sex, or your vagina when you menstruate, and shaped like tadpoles or tiny watersnakes

I wonder why people you have to meet have to be such liars. They lie as if their lives depended on it.

...having nothing better to do, meandered off to a coffee shop and sat facing each other for a couple of hours, neither of them talking much but each coming to the general conclusion that the other was a person rather like himself...

That’s what violence was: emotion leaking out from consciousness into the physical world, linking up with the muscles of the arms and shoulders and diaphragm and, inevitably, the face. Stifle emotion during an act of violence and the face becomes a blank, unreadable mask.

What makes somebody nice or unpleasant to be around is the way they communicate. When people are fucked up, their communication is fucked up.

This was a factory, a sorting house. We were no different from dogs and pigs and cows: all of us were allowed to play when we were small, but then, just before reaching maturity, we were sorted and classified. Being a high school student was the first step toward becoming a domestic animal.

They needed a reason why a little kid would commit murder, someone or something to point the finger at, and I think they were relieved when they hit upon horror movies as the culprit. But theres no reason a child commits murder, just as theres no reason a child gets lost. What would it be - because his parents werent watching him? Thats not a reason, its just a step in the process.

Words themselves arent that important. Even if somebody says words that shock you, or make you want to kill them, or make you tremble with emotion, the words themselves you tend to forget in time. Words are just tools we use to express or communicate something.

Thats when he hit her, when he saw how scared she was. He couldnt bear it that she was frightened and asking for help. Asking for help is wrong. Because there isnt any such thing as help in this world.