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.'

Born
January 12, 1949
Quotes
1.1K
Rank
#24

Quote collection

Haruki Murakami quotes (page 42 of 55)

1.1K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"Narratives have the same power, I think. Some readers of my novels ask me, "Why do you understand me?". That's a huge pleasure of mine because it means that readers and I can make our narratives relative."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"I never made any plan before writing, however I succeeded. I enjoyed writing with excitement ,"what happen on the next page?""

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"And as we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"Life: I'll never understand it."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"You couldn’t begin to imagine who I am, where I’m going, or what I’m about to do, All of you are trapped here. You can’t go anywhere, forward or back. But I’m not like you. I have work to do. I have a mission to accomplish. And so, with your permission, I shall move ahead."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"I can never say what I want to say, it's been like this for a while now. I try to say something but all I get are wrong words - the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It's like I'm split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing this big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this can't catch her."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"I'm not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don't enjoy the writing, I stop."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"It’s precisely because of the pain, the we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?"

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"This uneasiness comes over me from time to time, and I feel as if I've somehow been pieced together from two different puzzles."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?"

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"I used to think the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time. But it's not like that. It happens overnight."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"When I was fifteen, all I wanted was to go off to some other world, a place beyond anybody’s reach. A place beyond the flow of time.” - But there’s no place like that in this world. - Exactly. Which is why I’m living here, in this world where things are continually damaged, where the heart is fickle, where time flows past without a break."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"I'd made it back to the land of the living. No matter how boring or mediocre a world it might be, this was it."

Read quote 3 likes
Haruki Murakami Writer
Popular

"But I didn't walk a single step. I stopped a lot to stretch, but I never walked. I didn't come here to walk. I came to run. That's the reason-the only reason-I flew all the way to the northern tip of Japan. No matter how slow I might run, I wasn't about to walk. That was the rule."

Read quote 3 likes