"The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you."
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Quote collection
Haruki Murakami quotes (page 35 of 55)
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"When you are used to the kind of life -of never getting anything you want- you stop knowing what it is you want."
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"What do you mean, 'playing really creatively'? Can you give me an example?" "Hmm, let's see ... you send the music deep enough into your heart so that it makes your body undergo a kind of a physical shift, and simultaneously the listener's body also undergoes the same kind of physical shift. It's giving birth to that kind of shared state. Probably."
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"What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back."
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"My father always told me: 'Give somebody a hand and he'll take an arm."
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"You said that the mind is like the wind but perhaps it is we who are like the wind Knowing nothing, simply blowing through. Never aging, never dying."
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"I realize now that the reality of things is not something you convey to people but something you make."
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"When the fire goes out, you'll start feeling the cold. You'll wake up whether you want to or not."
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"Someone who can search for something is happy. Searching gives a meaning to life. Nowadays it’s not so easy to find something you might be looking for. The most important thing, however, is the search itself, the way you take. It’s not so important where it leads. that’s why my characters are always looking for something, maybe only a cat, a sheep or a wife, but that is at least the beginning of a story."
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"Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn't seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved."
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"But why should you be interested in me?" Good question. I can’t explain it myself right this moment. But maybe – just maybe – if we start getting together and talking, after a while something like Francis Lai’s soundtrack music will start playing in the background, and a whole slew of concrete reasons why I’m interested in you will line up out of nowhere. With luck, it might even snow for us."
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"Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in the wider world, she borrowed her husband's. If this had been all there was to her, she wouldn't have bothered anyone, but as is so often the case with such women, she suffered from an incurable case of of pretentiousness. Lacking any internalized values of her own, such people can arrive at a standpoint only by adopting other people's standards or views. The only principle that governs their minds is the question "How do I look?"
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"Hatred is like a long, dark shadow. Not even the person it falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. It is like a two-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you cut yourself. The more violently you hack at the other person, the more violently you hack at yourself. It can often be fatal. But it is not easy to dispose of. Please be careful, Mr.Okada. It is very dangerous. Once it has taken root in your heart, hatred is the most difficult think in the world to shake off."
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"Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in. So much so, we can't even tell whether our experiences belong to time or to the world of physical things."
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"I never trust people with no appetite. It's like they're always holding something back on you."
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"An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind. .... Something incredibly important - .. - had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence"
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"Time, of course, topples everyone in its path equally- the way that driver beats his old horse until it dies. But the thrashing we receive is one of frightful gentleness. Few of us even realize that we are being beaten."
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"From the girl who sat before me now...surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair. I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move."
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"Mediocrity's like a spot on a shirt—it never comes off."
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"I tell lies sometimes. The last time I lied was a year ago. I absolutely detest lying. You could say that lying and silence are the two greatest sins of present day society. Actually, I lie a lot, and I'm always clamming up."
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