"Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered?"
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Quote collection
Haruki Murakami quotes (page 17 of 55)
1.1K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death."
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"Each of us possesses a tangible living soul. The system has no such thing. We must not allow the system to exploit us."
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"Sometimes I feel so- I don’t know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you’re used to has been ripped away. Like there’s no more gravity, and I’m left to drift in outer space with no idea where I’m going’ Like a little lost Sputnik?’ I guess so."
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"Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action."
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"In most cases learning something essential in life requires physical pain."
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"People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you might strike out, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That's what can move the world. That's art."
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"I feel like I've swallowed a cloudy sky"
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"There's a special feeling you get on a veranda that you just can't get anywhere else."
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"If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it."
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"What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow."
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"But this thing, whatever it was, this mistlike something, hung there inside my body like a certain kind of potential. I wanted to give it a name, but the word refused to come to mind. I’m terrible at finding the right words for things. I’m sure Tolstoy would have been able to come up with exactly the right word"
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"There were plenty of women around who dressed smartly, and plenty more who dressed to impress, but this girl was different. Totally different. She wore her clothing with such utter naturalness and grace that she could have been a bird that had wrapped itself in a special wind as it made ready to fly off to another world. He had never seen a woman who wore her clothes with such apparent joy. And the clothes themselves looked as if, in being draped on her body, they had won new life for themselves."
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"Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge."
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"Killing time is not an easy job."
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"I get irritated, I get upset. Especially when I'm in a hurry. But I see it all as part of our training. To get irritated is to lose our way in life."
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"Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"
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"Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek."
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"Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest."
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"It's not me but the world that's deranged."
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