"A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance."
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Haruki Murakami quotes (page 18 of 55)
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"With the advent of winter, her eyes seemed to take on a greater transparency, a transparency that lead nowhere. Occassionally, for no particular reason, Naoko would gaze into my eyes as if searching for something. Each time I was filled with odd sensations of lonliness and inadequecy."
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"What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus."
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"I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change."
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"These days I just can't seem to say what I mean [...]. I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her."
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"Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other."
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"Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked in filthy air all the time late into the night. I was very excited when I started making a living out of my writing, and I decided, 'I will live in nothing but an absolutely healthy way.'"
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"A strange, terrific force unlike anything I've ever experienced is sprouting in my heart, taking root there, growing. Shut up behind my rib cage, my warm heart expands and contracts independent of my will--over and over."
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"Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."
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"sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody."
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"Has the dark shadow really disappeared? Or is it inside me, concealed, waiting for its chance to reappear? Like a clever thief hidden inside a house, breathing quietly, waiting until everyone’s asleep. I have looked deep inside myself, trying to detect something that might be there. But just as our consciousness is a maze, so too is our body. Everywhere you turn there’s darkness, and a blind spot. Everywhere you find silent hints, everywhere a surprise is waiting for you."
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"No matter how honestly you open up to someone, there are still things you cannot reveal."
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"If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price."
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"The things she most wanted to tell him would lose their meaning the moment she put them into words."
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"Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come."
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"If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well."
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"Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?"
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"Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane."
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"I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together."
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"Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?"
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