Haruki Murakami Quotes

“It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.”

“I have to get stronger—like a stray crow.”

“You can never put it back together like it was.”

“You’re you, you see, and nobody else. You are you, right?”

“People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues.”

“Things outside you are projections of what’s inside ... what’s inside ... is a projection of what’s outside.”

“What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.”

“As individuals each of us is extremely isolated, while ... all linked by a prototypical memory. ”

“What seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my own heart.”

“I ... feel an omen calling out to me, like a dark, omnipresent pool of water.”

“But the longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve lost what’s inside me—and ended up empty.”

“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, in fact, 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.”

“Everything is there, but there are no parts.”

“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”

“Move from reason that observes to reason that acts.”

“You’re the toughest 15-year-old on the planet.”

“It’s like my identity’s an orbit that I’ve strayed far away from.”

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions.”

“This is a first, I think. Or is it? ”

“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time.”

“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn’t take any more. Just once. ”

“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.”

“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment. ”

“What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.”

“I didn’t have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it’s fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.”

“So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?”

“But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”

“What makes us the most normal,” said Reiko, “is knowing that we’re not normal.”

“She’s letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you’re in big trouble.”

“No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning.”

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

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

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

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

“People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.”

“Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern.”