The voices / 781 fragments

Haruki Murakami

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Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Archive entries

01Undated

Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.

Haruki Murakami / quote

02Undated

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.

Haruki Murakami / quote

03Undated

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.

Haruki Murakami / quote

04Undated

Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.

Haruki Murakami / quote

05Undated

Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.

Haruki Murakami / quote

06Undated

In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.

Haruki Murakami / quote

07Undated

Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things.

Haruki Murakami / quote

08Undated

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

Haruki Murakami / quote

09Undated

You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel.

Haruki Murakami / quote

10Undated

When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

Haruki Murakami / quote

11Undated

Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.

Haruki Murakami / quote

12Undated

Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.

Haruki Murakami / quote

13Undated

The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues....[But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.

Haruki Murakami / quote

14Undated

That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

Haruki Murakami / quote

15Undated

As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.

Haruki Murakami / quote

16Undated

Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.

Haruki Murakami / quote

17Undated

People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies.

Haruki Murakami / quote

18Undated

Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat's chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own.

Haruki Murakami / quote

19Undated

Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action.

Haruki Murakami / quote

20Undated

People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring.

Haruki Murakami / quote

21Undated

Life is long, and sometimes cruel. Sometimes victims are needed. Someone has to take on that role. And human bodies are fragile, easily damaged. Cut them, and they bleed.

Haruki Murakami / quote

22Undated

It seemed to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.

Haruki Murakami / quote

23Undated

I don’t know what it means to live.

Haruki Murakami / quote

24Undated

Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn't fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That's what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries.

Haruki Murakami / quote