01UndatedLatter-day capitalism. Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdi-vided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfash-ionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match. Like pulling on a Missoni sweater over Trussardi slacks and Pollini shoes, you can now enjoy hybrid styles of morality. It's the way of the world—philosophy starting to look more and more like business administration.Although I didn't think so at the time, things were a lot simpler in 1969. All you had to do to express yourself was throw rocks at riot police. But with today's sophistication, who's in a position to throw rocks? Who's going to brave what tear gas? C'mon, that's the way it is. Everything is rigged, tied into that massive capital web, and beyond this web there's another web. Nobody's going anywhere. You throw a rock and it'll come right back at you.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
02UndatedEs decir..., lo que yo creo es que el hombre piensa en el significado de la vida porque sabe con certeza que va morir algún día. (...) Nadie sabe lo que va a ocurrir. Por eso nosotros, para evolucionar necesitamos la muerte.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
04UndatedWith my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
05UndatedIn his or her own way, everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
06UndatedThere had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
07UndatedDon't blame me. That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
08UndatedWasn't it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core-- a tiny flame to cup one's hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
09UndatedWe truly believed in something back then, and we knew we were the kind of people capable of believing in something - with all our hearts. And that kind of hope will never simply vanish.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
10UndatedThis is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
12UndatedNo truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
13UndatedPeople leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
14UndatedTell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?""I guess it depends on how you die.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
15UndatedAren't you afraid of dying?Not really. I've watched lots of good-for-nothing, worthless people die, and if people like that can do it, then I should be able to handle it.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
16UndatedMy peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
18UndatedThose were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
19UndatedI'm not afraid to die. What I'm afraid of is having reality get the better of me, of having reality leave me behind.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
20UndatedIt's unfair."As a rule, life is unfair," I said.Yeah, but I think I did say some awful things."To Dick?"Yeah."I pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and turned off the ignition. "That's just stupid, that kind of thinking," I said, nailing her with my eyes. "Instead of regretting what you did, you could have treated him decently from the beginning. You could've tried to be fair. But you didn't. You don't even have the right to be sorry.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
21UndatedThat's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
22UndatedI’ve never once thought about how I was going to die,” she said. “I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
24UndatedA poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything’s going to be all right. you’ve made it past Dead Man’s Curve and you’re out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
