Quotes from Haruki Murakami

The strength I'm looking for isn't the kind where you win or lose. I'm not after a wall that'll repel power coming from outside. What I want is the kind of strength to be able to absorb that outside power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things—unfairness, misfortune, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings....

Because brains packed with knowledge are yummy, that's why. They're nice and creamy. And sort of grainy at the same time.

All I wanted was to put myself to sleep in towns I didn't know.

That box contains the 'something' that was inside you. You didn't know that when you carried it here and gave it to Keiko with your own hands. Now you'll never get it back.

Okay, consider this. Say you're going to go on a long journey with someone by car. And the two of you will take turns driving. Which type of person would you choose? One who's a good driver, but inattentive, or an attentive person who's not such a good driver?

Al fin y al cabo, perder a una mujer consistía en eso. Perder esos momentos especiales que invalidaban la realidad, aun estando integrados en ella.

I could hear hundreds of elves sweeping out my head with their tiny brooms. They kept sweeping and sweeping. It never occurred to any of them to use a dustpan.

cuando uno es joven, siempre cree que todo va a salir bien. Pero para cuando uno se da cuenta de que no es así, ya es demasiado tarde

I wasn't able to be that person for you, and I did a terrible thing. I feel awful about it. But there was something wrong between us from the start, as if we'd done the buttons up wrong.

I had no idea what to say. A silence descended on us as sudden as the instant fresh oil is poured into a large frying pan.

And my inability to share this anger with anybody in the lobby aroused in me a profound sense of isolation. - Toru Okada

All he had ever prayed for was the ability to catch outfield flies, in answer to which God had bestowed upon him a penis that was bigger than anybody else's. What kind of world came up with such idiotic bargains?

I myself have adopted the position that, in fact, we never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not.

Hell has no true bottom.

It was far too hot to think about complicated matters.

There was an inexhaustible source of clouds in some land far to the north. Decisive people, minds fixed on the task, clothed in thick, gray uniforms, working silently from morning to night to make clouds, like bees make honey, spiders make webs, and war makes widows.

No matter how tired the body gets, one must never let the exhaustion enter one's thoughts.

Aquilo que os nossos olhos vêem nem sempre corresponde à realidade.

People don't just die when their time comes. They gradually die away, from the inside.

I sometimes wish I could go off in search of something," he declared, "but before getting even that far, I myself wouldn't have the slightest idea what to search for. Now my father, he's someone who's been searching for something all his life. He's still searching today. Ever since I was a little boy, my father's told me about the white sheep that came to him in his dreams. So I always thought that's what life is like. An ongoing search.

The two of us are linked together by the heavy bonds of silence that pass through the wall seperating our two worlds. We need each other more than anything, I feel without a doubt.

When there's nothing to do, you do nothing slowly and intently.

Onsuz yaln?zl?k duyuyordum, ama yaln?zl?k duyabilmem bile bana bir avuntu gibi geliyordu. Yaln?zl?k o denli de kötü bir duygu deÄŸildi. Küçük kuÅŸlar uçup gittikten sonra akmeÅŸenin sesizliÄŸi gibi bir ÅŸeydi.

There are — how do you say — things in this world our philosophy cannot account for.