Haruki murakami quotes

Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I'm talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean.

If you think of someone enough, you’re sure to meet them again.

Everything, everything seemed once-upon-a-time.

Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion

No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.

Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

Not everything was lost in the flow of time

As I see it, you are living with something that you keep hidden deep inside. Something heavy. I felt it from the first time I met you. You have a strong gaze, as if you have made up your mind about something. To tell you the truth, I myself carry such things around inside. Heavy things. That is how I can see it in you.

What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real.

One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year.

What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.

A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.

Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.

Sometimes it's not the people who change, it's the mask that falls off.

Here, too, a brand-new day is beginning. It could be a day like all the others, or it could be a day remarkable enough in many ways to remain in the memory. In either case, for now, for most people, it is a blank sheet of paper.

Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely.

Be fearless, be brave, be bold, love yourself

Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all.

Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.

Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn't control you--you should control them.

People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can't predict it. That's love.

For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a "Reserved" sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I'd never see her again.

It's easy to forget things you don't need anymore.

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.

People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.

Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.

It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.

Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.

Never let the darkness or negativity outside affect your inner self. Just wait until morning comes and the bright light will drown out the darkness.

Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.

If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well.

There was just one moon. That familiar, yellow, solitary moon. The same moon that silently floated over fields of pampas grass, the moon that rose--a gleaming, round saucer--over the calm surface of lakes, that tranquilly beamed down on the rooftops of fast-asleep houses. The same moon that brought the high tide to shore, that softly shone on the fur of animals and enveloped and protected travelers at night. The moon that, as a crescent, shaved slivers from the soul--or, as a new moon, silently bathed the earth in its own loneliness. THAT moon.

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.

There are lots of things we never understand, no matter how many years we put on, no matter how much experience we accumulate.

I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I’ve had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself.

All over the world people have developed their own ideas about what's right and wrong in life, but so long as you aren't harming others or the Earth, it's your choice when you decide how you want to live your life - Yours and yours alone. Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with.

If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.

Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only arseholes do that.

I happen to like the strange ones. People who look normal and leads normal lives - they're the ones you have to watch out for.

What we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with.

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

One foot in front of the other. Repeat as often as necessary to finish.

What happens when people open their hearts?"... "They get better.

This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be a long process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time.

If you do anything out of the ordinary, you can be sure someone, somewhere, will get upset.

What's nurtured slowly grows well.

In dreams begins responsiblities.

She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.

Fate seems to be taking me in some even stranger directions.

Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.

The world is an inherently unfair place.

Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

I want to believe you, but if that's true, I just don't get it. Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean, if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone?

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

There is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.

When someone is trying very hard to get something, they don't. And when they're running away from something as hard as they can, it usually catches up with them.

The journey I'm taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart.

I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling.

No matter how honestly you open up to someone, there are still things you cannot reveal.

You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them.

Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology ... But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone. And for me, what happened in the woods that day is one of these.

When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You’re seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you’re worth.

In a sense, I'm the one who ruined me: I did it myself.

Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant.

Time flows in a strange way on Sundays.

Start making excuses and there's no end to it. I can't live that kind of life.

When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

I'm all alone, but I'm not lonely.

Say it before you run out of time. Say it before it's too late. Say what you're feeling. Waiting is a mistake.

As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself.

Strong and independent? I’m neither. I’m just being pushed along by reality, whether I like it or not.

Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.

What matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. When you do that, it is always the first time and the last.

The best way to think about reality, I had decided, was to get as far away from it as possible.

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

Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.

I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.

I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy.

How wonderful it is to be able to write someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like this is truly marvelous.

But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn’t it?

One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.

Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.

Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice.

There are many things we only see clearly in retrospect.

Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams.

I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.

Deep rivers run quiet.

In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount.

I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?

If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.

Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.

If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.

We're all kind of weird and twisted and drowning.

Please remember: things are not what they seem.

When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. ‘Mythomania’ is the word for it.

Fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step.

She was seriously in love, but she never made demands.

One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds

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

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

To be able to talk to your heart’s content about a book you like with someone who feels the same way about it is one of the greatest joys that life can offer.

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.

Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.

Find me now. Before someone else does.

Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die.

As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.

I probably still haven’t completely adapted to the world. I don’t know, I feel like this isn’t the real world. The people, the scene: they just don’t seem real to me.

As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around.

Even if we could turn back, we'd probably never end up where we started.

The thing I’m most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what I’m going to do. Of not knowing what I’m doing right now

I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.

The body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take a visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.

I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together.

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.

Inside that darkness, i saw rain falling on the sea. Rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no one there to see it. The rain strikes the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don't know it is raining.

Now all you can do is wait. It must be hard for you, but there is a right time for everything. Like the ebb and flow of tides. No one can do anything to change them. When it is time to wait, you must wait.

If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

It’s pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy Pride.

An unhealthy soul requires a healthy body.

In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.