Quotes from Haruki Murakami

The very thought of such people's intolerant worldview, their inflated sense of self superiority, and their callous imposition of their own beliefs on others was enough to fill her with rage.

Like two straight lines overlapping, we momentarily crossed at a certain point, then went our separate ways.

Life is strange, isn't it? You can be totally entranced by the glow of something one minute, be willing to sacrifice everything to make it yours, but then a little time passes, or your perspective changes a bit, and all of a sudden you're shocked at how faded it appears. What was I looking at?

I could never get excited about games you play with other people. I can't get into them. I lose interest.

No one noticed that I had changed- that I had given up sleep entirely, that I was spending all my time reading, that my mind was someplace a hundred years - and hundreds of miles - from reality.

The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new.

The task of writing consists primarily in recognizing the distance between oneself and the things around one. It is not sensitivity one needs, but a yardstick.

Look deep enough into any person and you will find something shining within. My job was to uncover this and, if the surface is fogged up (which was more than the case), polish it with a cloth to make it shine again. Otherwise the darker side would naturally reveal itself in the portrait.

I think most people live in a fiction. I'm no exception. Think of it in terms of a car's transmission. It's like a transmission that stands between you and the harsh realities of life. You take the raw power from outside and use gears to adjust it so everything's all nicely in sync. That's how you keep your fragile body intact. Does this make any sense?

But listen to me--there are times in life when those kinds of excuses don't cut it anymore. Situations when nobody cares whether you're suited for the task at hand or not.

I contented myself with whiskey, for medicinal purposes. It helped numb my various aches and pains. Not that the alcohol actually reduced the pain, it just gave the pain a life of its own, apart from mine.

I hear things. Not sounds, but thick slabs of silence being dragged through the dark.

Time goes by so damn fast.

What alternative is there to the media's "Us" versus "Them"? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this "righteous" position of "ours" all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the "dirty" distortions in "their" thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we'll remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy.

I happen to like the strange ones, the driver said. People who look normal and live a normal life--they're the ones you have to watch out for.

He was up to his neck in it. He was breathing the air of its world, adapting to its gravity. The story's essence had permeated every part of him, to the walls of his viscera.

It isn't a question of intelligence. I'm not all that bright, I just have my own way of thinking. That's why people get disgusted with me. They accuse me of always bringing up things that are better left alone. If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you.

Writing a novel is like having a dream.

But this is something you have to figure out on your own. Nobody can help you. That's what love's all about, Kafka. You're the one having those wonderful feelings. but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it. All by yourself.

Don't blame me. That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution.

Irony deepens a person, helps them mature. It is the entrance to salvation on a higher plane, to a place where you can find a more universal kind of hope.

Samsa certainly had no idea what lay ahead. He was in the dark about everything: the future, of course, but the present and the past as well . What was right, and what was wrong? Just learning how to dress was a riddle.

make believe forest I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing with. I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person's attitude so that they wouldn't get any closer. I didn't easily swallow what other people told me. My only passions were books and music.

This was the second stage in my life, a step in my personal evolution--abandoning the idea of being different, and settling for normal... Gradually I drew nearer to the world, and the world drew nearer to me.