"I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightning. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me."
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Haruki Murakami quotes (page 12 of 55)
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"I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself."
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"That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories."
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"I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all."
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"I go by the gut. I might not appear to have any talent but I've got plenty of gut instinct."
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"Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness."
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"Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there."
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"The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to. We'd just make small talk, play soccer together. When something bothered me, I didn't talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that's just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own."
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"There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair."
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"They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It's a miracle, a cosmic miracle."
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"This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock built when peace filled the world."
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"Strong and independent? I’m neither. I’m just being pushed along by reality, whether I like it or not."
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"Mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances."
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"I stare at her chest. As she breathes, the rounded peaks move up and down like the swell of waves, somehow reminding me of rain falling softly on a broad stretch of sea. I'm the lonely voyager standing on deck, and she's the sea. The sky is a blanket of gray, merging with the gray sea off on the horizon. It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky. Between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart."
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"If you miss the bus, miss the train, you’d be left behind. So everyone says, let’s get on the train, let’s get on the bus and go faster and get rich... I just didn’t like that kind of lifestyle. I love to read books, to listen to music."
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"I was reduced to pure concept. My flesh had dissolved; my form had dissipated. I floated in space. Liberated of my corporeal being, but without dispensation to go anywhere else.I was adrift in the void. Somewhere across the fine line separating nightmare from reality."
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"There's no war that will end all wars."
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"No matter where i go, i still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but i'm still the same incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that i can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as i'll come to defining myself."
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"Constipation was one of the things she hated most in the world, on par with despicable men who commit domestic violence and narrow-minded religious fundamentalists."
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"We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole."
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