Quotes from Ry? Murakami

True decadence wasn't anything carnal; it was about sacrificing the powerless minority for the sake of the majority.

I keep thinking, won't somebody make a movie like what's inside my head, I'm always thinking that.

Self-esteem isn't an emotion. Self-esteem is just self-knowledge, a solid understanding of your limitations. It's living according to your own standards.

when beautiful women get angry, it scares people. Ugly women get mad and it's just comical, right?

If you don't know what you want, you'll never find it.

She told me that real strength is the capacity for kindness to others, and that I should do whatever I could to find that kind of strength. She said she couldn't tell me how to go about doing that, because she never found it herself, but that people who where strong enough to be kind to others could always get by in this world.

My play over, watching the sun go down, I'd frown and blow on the wound, and then I felt a sense of peace, as if I and the gray evening landscape were confiding in each other. Just the opposite from heroin or melting together in a woman's juices, the pain made me stand out from my surroundings, the pain made me feel as if I were shining. And I thought this shining self could get along well with the lovely orange light of the setting sun.

Americans love to mess about with the brain--that's why they are at the forefront of neurosurgery.

The mental and emotional torment of the old cycle of anxiety - unable to bear being alone, wanting someone always near but growing anxious when someone does get close, fearing that if they get any closer there's no telling what might happen, until the fear itself becomes unbearable and solitude seems the only solution..

People who thought it fun to keep tegu lizards in cases too small for them displayed a mentality exactly like that of his parents. "It's so cute!" they cooed as they fed the thing or gave it water or moved its case into the sunlight or warmed it with lamps. Even under the best conditions, lizards and tortoises never lived as long in captivity as in the wild; these people were slowly but surely killing the pets they found so adorable.

sex wasn't just about two people getting naked and tangled up together. A lot of other things were involved, things that make you feel so good you forget who you are, and things that feel so creepy you literally get goose bumps, and things you hold so dear you're afraid to go to sleep, and things that make you so happy you want to bounce up and down—layer after layer of things like that, all mixed up into a sticky mess with the blood and sweat and love juice.

What these young men feared and hated more than anything else was being spoken to by people they hadn't met, or having to explain themselves to people they didn't know.

I don't really know how to say it, but if you're really honestly having fun, you're not supposed to think and look for things right in the middle of it, am I right?

They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but it's not true. The cover is all you get. But it is true that appearances can be deceptive, surely. Only if you let yourself be influenced by what other people think. If you trust your own feelings, you can judge anybody by the way they look and never go wrong.

any pop song in this particular country, when sung by several citizens at once, tended to turn into a mindless celebration devoid of any genuine sense of melancholy.

I never liked to just absorb something somebody else created. I'm too self-conscious, and too critical, I guess, and it always felt like I was wasting time. But after you went away... well, it started to feel like time was wasting me. Every tick of the second hand was like a needle in my skin. Tick, tick, tick...

I hate people who break down crying when you're trying to talk about something important. Men and women both. You can't trust weepy people. They think they're the center of the world, and that their tears can absolve them of anything.

Surely he'd have no trouble finding a replacement for someone like me." "You may like to tell yourself that, but it's only an excuse for not giving a damn about his feelings. Anyway, enough of that.

talking with him made me realize I wasn't the only one. "I mean, it's like everybody's acting out a part," he'd tell me. "They say stuff they don't really think, or do stuff they don't really feel like doing, and after a while you find yourself acting the same way.

Over the previous four days I had prepared my answers to all the questions I thought she might ask. Such is the wisdom—or the sad compulsion—of someone who was semi-autistic as a child.

I was worried that at this rate our mutual affection might begin to cool, that the special feelings we had for each other would end up as nothing more than close friendship. Male–female relationships are always in transition. If there's no forward progress, things tend to slip backwards.

He's got five rings in his ear, eighteen gauge to ten gauge, but when I told him to get one in his nipple to match mine, and to get a Sailor Moon tattoo - because I like Sailor Moon? - or if not that, a skull, he stopped calling me.

Nations that are down on their luck and bitter about it are generally disliked and shunned by their neighbors, just as individual people in that position are. Those that are both impoverished and embittered tend to lose the ability to control themselves.

Men today are such a lonely breed