Haruki Murakami quotes - page 27

Looking at the ocean makes me miss people, and hanging out with people makes me miss the ocean. (Haruki Murakami)
You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them.” Sara looked directly into his eyes. "If nothing else, you need to remember that. You can't erase history, or change it. It would be like destroying yourself. View quote
Haruki Murakami
Things that have form will all disappear. But certain feelings stay with us forever. View quote
Haruki Murakami
I don't give a damn about what people say. They can be reptile food for all I care. View quote
Haruki Murakami
From the moment of my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way to coexist with intense pain. View quote
Haruki Murakami
What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one? View quote
Haruki Murakami
I guess I don't really understand you yet,' I said. 'I'm not all that smart. It takes me a while to understand things. But if I do have time, I will come to understand you -- better than anyone else in the world ever can. View quote
Haruki Murakami
I was enveloped in numbness, and absence of feeling so deep the bottom was lost from view. View quote
Haruki Murakami
The silence is so deep it hurts our ears. View quote
Haruki Murakami
You're, you see, and nobody else. Youyou, right? View quote
Haruki Murakami
People with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward. (Haruki Murakami)
The world follows its own course. Each possesses his own thoughts, each treads his own path. So it is with your mother, and so it is with your starling. As it is with everyone. The world follows its own course. View quote
Haruki Murakami
The song is over. But the melody lingers on. View quote
Haruki Murakami
You have an interesting history. Now people can generally be classified in to two groups: the mediocre realists and the mediocre dreamers. You clearly belong to the letter. Your fate is and will always be the fate of dreamers. View quote
Haruki Murakami
But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows-maybe even tomorrow. View quote
Haruki Murakami
Every person has their own colour. View quote
Haruki Murakami
Force yourself to explain it and you create lies. View quote
Haruki Murakami
Date etiquette lesson number two: Don't die. Go on living. View quote
Haruki Murakami
A secret's a secret because you don't let people in on it. View quote
Haruki Murakami
.... solitude is, more or less, an inevitable consequence. View quote
Haruki Murakami
The negation of cognition thus correlates on the verbal level. For when those two pillars of Western humanism, individual cognition and evolutionary continuity, lose their meaning, language loses meaning. Existence ceases for the individuum as we know it, and all becomes chaos. You cease to be a unique entity unto yourself, but exist simply as chaos. And not just the chaos that is you; you chaos is also my chaos. To wit, existence is communication, and communication, existence. (Haruki Murakami)
The term "spirit projection " sprang to mind. Are you familiar with it? Japanese folk tales are full of this sort of thing, where the soul temporarily leaves the body and goes off a great distance to take care of some vital task and then returns to reunite with the body. The sort of vengeful spirits that populate The Tale of Genji may be something similar. The notion of the soul not just leaving the body at death but-assuming the will is strong enough -also being able to separate from the body of the living is probably an idea that took root in Japan in ancient times. Of course there's no scientific proof of this, and I hesitate to even raise the idea. View quote
Haruki Murakami
According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people. In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half. View quote
Haruki Murakami
In the depths of our crater lake, everything is silent. The volcano's been extinct for ages. Layer upon layer of solitude, like folds of soft mud. The little bit of light that manages to penetrate to the depths lights up the surroundings like the remains of some faint, distant memory. At these depths there's no sign of life. I don't know how long she looks at me -not at me, maybe, but at the spot where I am. Time's rules don't apply here. Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart. View quote
Haruki Murakami
Weakness is something that rots in the body. Like gangrene. I've felt that ever since I was a teenager. That's why I was always on edge. There's this something inside you that's rotting away and you feel it all along. View quote
Haruki Murakami