Quotes from Haruki Murakami

The true enemy of this bunch was not State Power but Lack of Imagination.

Her long hair is loosely tied back, her face very refined and intelligent-looking, with beautiful eyes and a shadowy smile playing over her lips, a smile whose sense of completeness is indescribable. It reminds me of a small, sunny spot, the special patch of sunlight you find only in some remote, secluded place.

I trudged along through each day in its turn, looking up only rarely, eyes locked on the endless swamp that lay before me, planting my right foot, raising my left, planting my left food, raising my right, never sure where I was, never sure I was headed in the right direction, knowing only that I had to keep moving, one step at a time.

Our life here was just a momentary illusion, and someday reality would yank us back to the world we came from.

But don't get me wrong. I'm not totally mad at you. I'm just sad. You were so nice to me when I was having my problems, but now that you're having yours, it seems there's not a thing I can do for you.

En este mundo hay cosas que sólo puedes hacer sola y cosas que sólo puedes hacer con otra persona. Es importante ir combinando las unas con las otras.

You know, the usual story. Once upon a time I was playing my harp by a spring when a fairy appeared out of nowhere, handed me a Beretta Model 92, and told me to shoot the white rabbit over there for target practice.

My self in the mirror is just a physical reflection.

We can't undo what has already happened. Once something's ruined, it can't go back to the way it was.

But there's such a thing as a way of living that's guided by the way a person's going to die.

Now I'm not trying to make excuses, but I don't get turned on by that many women. If anything, I think of myself as more the non-turn-on type. So when I do get turned on, I don't trust it; I have to investigate the source.

We worked so hard, so hard, building our world one brick at a time. And when it fell apart, it happened just like that. Everything was gone before you knew it.

Everyone ended up alone sooner or later. He was thirty at the time, beyond the age for complaining about loneliness. He felt as if he had put on several years all at once. But that was all. No further emotion welled up inside him.

Your readers have seen a sky with one moon in it any number of times, right? But I doubt they've seen a sky with two moons in it side by side. When yoy introduce things that most readers have never seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them with as much precision and in as much detail as possible. What you can eliminate from fiction is the description of what most readers have seen.

Lo que para una persona puede ser una distancia prudencial, para otra puede ser un abismo.

Nobody ever recommended or even desired that I be a novelist - in fact, some tried to stop me. I had the idea to be one, and that's what I did.

Ask whatever questions you want, but remember, I may not answer.

I felt better for having met her.

If the boat they were riding in was plunging over the falls upside down, there was nothing to do but fall with it. Tebngo could struggle all he wanted to at this point, and it would do nothing to change the flow of the river.

Genius doesn't specialize; genius is reason in itself.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream - I was surprised to find it happening.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Team sports aren't my thing. I find it easier to pick something up if I can do it at my own speed. And you don't need a partner to go running, you don't need a particular place, like in tennis, just a pair of trainers.

Love and used Subarus were two different things. Weren't they?