Quotes from Haruki Murakami

The book didn't come to any conclusion, and nobody wants to read a book that doesn't have one. For me, though, having no conclusion seemed perfectly fine.

Now that I can no longer see you, I realize how much I needed you

I can't imagine finding anybody to take your place. You might not find a person that easily, but you could probably find a way without too much trouble, Aomama noted. The dowager looked at Aomame calmly, her lips forming a satisfied smile. That may be true, she said, but I almost surely could never find anthing to take the place of what we are sharing here and now. You are you and only you. I'm very grateful for that. More grateful than I can say.

I'm glad to know that time still keeps on flowing at four in the morning.

Naturally I have zero friends. I've built a wall around me, never letting anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself. Who could like someone like that? They all keep an eye on me, but I'm just glad they didn't bother me. They might hate me, or even afraid of me.

April and May were painful, lonely months for me because I couldn't talk to you. I never knew that spring could be so painful and lonely. Better to have three Februaries than a spring like this.

I gazed up at the sky. I was in a tiny boat, on a vast ocean. No wind, no waves, just me floating there. Adrift on the open sea.. ..A tiny boat cut loose from the fiction of the ship.

Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves.

Le travail ne représentait qu'ennui pour moi, je détestais aller au bureau. Je me sentais vraiment oppressé. J'avais l'impression que mon moi véritable se rétrécissait de plus en plus, et que j'allais finir par disparaître.

She was short, and even in a good mood she talked like she was half a step away from picking a fight.

Things that come out of nowhere go back to nowhere, that's all.

I don't know why I'm so crazy about cats. I like how they are soft and warm, and individualistic, kind of like me.

I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

I didn't have the vaguest idea of what to do – I couldn't keep staring at the wall forever, I told myself. But even that admonition didn't work. A faculty advisor reviewing a graduation thesis would have had the perfect comment: you write well, you argue clearly, but you don't have anything to say.

You have to wait for tomorrow to find out what tomorrow will bring.

The world is a metaphor, Kafka Tamura.

I look around me sometimes and I get sick to my stomach. Why the hell don't these bastards do something? I wonder. They don't do a fucking thing, and then they moan about it.

Si no lo entiendes sin que te lo explique, quiere decir que no lo entenderás por más que te lo explique

Loving her, and being loved, was the only way I could hold myself together.

A cell is just a room if you don't lock the door.

Pero el principio de que el saber está por encima de la ignorancia en cualquier situación constituía la base de su manera de pensar y su postura ante la vida. Por muy doloroso que resultase, debía saberlo. Porque sólo el saber fortalece a las personas.

I add things, cross them off, then add a whole other bunch and cross them off, too.

That is because most people believe not so much in truth as in things they wish were the truth.

Its Barnum & Bailey world just as phony as it can be, But it would't be make-believe if you believed in me