Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami

Writer

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese author known for his unique blend of magical realism and deep exploration of love and loneliness in works like 'Norwegian Wood.'

Thinking People Writing Running Heart World
Born
January 12, 1949
Quotes
1.1K
Rank
#24

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Haruki Murakami quotes (page 10 of 55)

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"For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary – or perhaps more like mediocre – level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be."

Running Distance Mean
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"I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko, several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life."

Spring Home Writing
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"Isn't life strange? There are people who have so many leftover clothes they can't stuff them all in their wardrobe. And then there are people like me, whose socks never match."

Clothes People Stuff
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"Kumiko and I felt something for each other from the beginning. It was not one of those strong, impulsive feelings that can hit two people like an electric shock when they first meet, but something quieter and gentler, like two tiny lights traveling in tandem through a vast darkness and drawing imperceptibly closer to each other as they go. As our meetings grew more frequent, I felt not so much that I had met someone new as that I had chanced upon a dear old friend."

Strong Two Drawing
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"I was feeling lonely without her, but the fact that I could feel lonely at all was consolation. Loneliness wasn't such a bad feeling. It was like the stillness of the pin oak after the little birds had flown off."

Lonely Loneliness Bird
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"What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously."

Care Norwegian Wood Terrible
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"You end up exhausted and spent, but later, in retrospect, you realize what it all was for. The parts fall into place, and you can see the whole picture and finally understand the role each individual part plays. The dawn comes, the sky grows light, and the colors and shapes of the roofs of houses, which you could only glimpse vaguely before, come into focus."

Fall Light Color
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"A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way."

Writing Sleep Night
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"She was seriously in love, but she never made demands."

Demand Made
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"How can the mind be so imperfect?" she says with a smile. I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose. "It may well be imperfect," I say, "but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow." "Where do the lead?" "To oneself," I answer. "That's where the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere." I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall. "Not one thing is your fault," I comfort her."

Wall Winter Moon
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"Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence."

Karma Things In Life Events
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"Reality was utterly coolheaded and utterly lonely."

Lonely Reality
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"I'm going to take you out of here ... I'm going to take you home, to the world where you belong, where cats with bent tails live, and there are little backyards, and alarm clocks ring in the morning."

Morning Home Cat
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"Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime."

Lasts Firsts Daytime
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"In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive."

Life Lesson Struggle Return
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"He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken."

Broken Promise Doe
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"What do you think? I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love."

Thinking Breathing Tree
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"What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real."

Real Eye Quake
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