Quotes from Haruki Murakami

Talent is like a container. You can work as hard as you want, but the size will never change. It'll only hold so much water and no more.

I could drink my coffee, read my book, pass the time of day without any special thought, all because I was part of the regular scenery. Here I had no ties to anyone. Fact is, I'd come to reclaim myself.

Perhaps nothing can be certain in this world, I said. But at least we can believe in something.

My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.

Killing time is not an easy job

That's the way it is with the mind. Nothing is ever equal. Like a river, as it flows, the course changes with the terrain.

The tomatoes and string beans were but chilled shadows. Tasteless shadows. Nor was there any taste to the coffee or crackers. Maybe because of the morning sun? The light of morning decomposes everything.

She leaves behind a damp pillow, wet with her tears. You touch the warmth with your hand and watch the sky outside gradually lighten. Far away a crow caws. The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those details of the real, there are dreams. And everyone's living in them.

The mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed—your self.

Now that you've said hello, I'm afraid we move right into farewells. Hello, goodbye. Like flowers scattered in a storm, man's life is one long farewell, as they say

Time flows in a strange way on Sundays.

It's simple. If there's no station, no trains will stop there.

Whether you want to or not. But the place you return to is always slightly different from the place you left. That's the rule. It can never be exactly the same.

In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil, the man said. Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places.

There's a void inside me, a blank that's slowly expanding, devouring what's left of who I am. I can hear it happening. I'm totally lost, my identity dying.

And any anxiety that is to not especially anxious is in the end, an anxiety hardly worth mentioning.

Necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals, or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That's what you call dramaturgy.

But as Nietzsche said, 'The gods furl their flags at boredom.

Grandfather always said school's a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain. Grandfather hardly went to school either.

The minute you leave your house, all phones sound alike.

Time came slowly and passed slowly, so leisurely that at times he could swear it had stealthily doubled back on itself.

Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise: without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

I'm completely empty. Do you know what it means to be completely empty? Being empty is like an unlived-in house. An unlocked unlived-in house. Anybody can come in, any time they want. That's what scares me the most.

When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind.