Quotes from Haruki Murakami

Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?

I was in my house, alone in the living room, anxious about you, watching the flashes of lightning. And a flash of lightning lit up this truth for me, right in front of my eye. That night i lost you, I lost something inside me. Or perhaps several things. Something central to my existence, the very support for who I am as a person

Loving another person is a wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself.

I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.

No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. It's like your shadow. It follows you everywhere. -Komura

It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.

If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

From a distance, most things look beautiful.

Let's say you are an empty vessel. So what? What's wrong with that?" Eri said. "You're still a wonderful, attractive vessel. And really, does anybody know who they are? So why not be a completely beautiful vessel? The kind people feel good about, the kind people want to entrust with precious belongings.

Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy.

There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.

Everyone who has something is afraid of losing it, and people with nothing are worried they'll forever have nothing. Everyone is the same.

sometimes i'd wake up at two or three in the morning and not be able to fall asleep again. i'd get out of bed, go to the kitchen, and pour myself a whiskey. glass in hand, i'd look down at the darkened cemetary across teh way and the headlights of the cars on the road. the moments of time linking night and dawn were long and dark. if i could cry, it might make things easier. but what would i cry over? i was too self centered to cry for other people, too old to cry for myself.

Will you wait for me forever?

Friends don't need the intervention of a third party. Friendship's a voluntary thing.

Cell phones are so convenient that they're an inconvenience.

Your work should be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience.

Where there is light, there must be shadow, where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow.... We do not know if the so-called Little People are good or evil. This is, in a sense, something that surpasses our understanding and our definitions. We have lived with them since long, long ago-- from a time before good and evil even existed, when people's minds were still benighted.

It's not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark. There's a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does.

Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people.

Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly's wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose.

The fact that I'm me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.