31 Best Haruki Murakami Quotes And Sayings

“No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don't like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I can.” – Haruki Murakami

“Money had no name of course. And if it did have a name, it would no longer be money. What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.” – Haruki Murakami

“I don't really know if it's the right thing to do, making new life. Kids grow up, generations take their place. What does it all come to? More hills bulldozed and more ocean fronts filled in? Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it?” – Haruki Murakami

“You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.” – Haruki Murakami

“The world would be a pretty dull place if it were made up only of the first-rate, right?” – Haruki Murakami

“The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.” – Haruki Murakami

“Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder's frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain.” – Haruki Murakami

“It wasn't like there was some obvious change. Actually, the problem was more a lack of change. Nothing about her had changed - the way she spoke, her clothes, the topics she chose to talk about, her opinions - they were all the same as before. Their relationship was like a pendulum gradually grinding to a halt, and he felt out of synch.” – Haruki Murakami

“I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.” – Haruki Murakami

“It's easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether or not you clean up the shit.” – Haruki Murakami

“We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze.” – Haruki Murakami

“Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with.” – Haruki Murakami

“I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together.” – Haruki Murakami

“Maybe that's why people don't like you. You make it obvious you don't care whether people like you or not. That makses some people angry.” – Haruki Murakami

“It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck.” – Haruki Murakami

“Yo no soy tan fuerte. A mi me importa que me entiendan. Hay personas a quienes quiero comprender y quiero que me comprendan. Hasta cierto punto, pienso que es inevitable que el resto de la gnete no lo haga. Ya me he hecho a la idea. Así que no me ocurre lo mismo que a Nagasawa, a quien no le importa que no le entiendan.” – Haruki Murakami

“It's not me but the world that's deranged.” – Haruki Murakami

“Maybe the world was like a revolving door, it occurred to him as his consciousness was fading away. And which section you ended up in was just a matter of where your foot happened to fall.” – Haruki Murakami

“People lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off and turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned.” – Haruki Murakami

“Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It is like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. Things will go where they are supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it is time for them to be hurt. Life is like ...

... that.” – Haruki Murakami

“Tendencies. Yougottendencies. Soevenifyoudideverythingoveragain, yourwholelife, yougottendenciestodojustwhatyoudid, alloveragain. -The Sheep Man.” – Haruki Murakami

“Everybody has to start somewhere. You have your whole future ahead of you. Perfection doesn't happen right away.” – Haruki Murakami

“No creas que estoy enfadada contigo. Sólo estoy triste. Por que tú has sido muy amable conmigo, y, a cambio, no he sabido ayudarte. Tú siempre estás encerrado en tu propio mundo y, cuando llamo a la puerta, ¨toc, toc¨, te limitas a levantar la cabeza antes de volver a encerrarte.” – Haruki Murakami

“I go out on the porch and gaze up at the stars twinkling above, the random scattering of millions of stars. Even in a planetarium you wouldn't find as many. Some of them really look big and distinct, like if you reached your hand out intently you could touch them. The whole thing is breathtaking. Not just beautiful though--the stars like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And ...

... they're watching me. What I've done up till now, what I'm going to do--they know it all. Nothing gets past their watchful eyes. As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart's pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I've never given them more than a passing ...

... thought before. Bot just stars--how many other things haven't I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about? I suddenly feel helpless, completely powerless. And I know I'll never outrun that awful feeling. (135)” – Haruki Murakami

“Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.” – Haruki Murakami

“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.” – Haruki Murakami

“Trouble is we end up being worse at saying things well. It's got to be an inborn fault. Naturally, everyone's got faults. My biggest fault is that the faults i was born with grow bigger each year.” – Haruki Murakami

“That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution” – Haruki Murakami

“Continuamos viviendo cada uno a su manera, incluso ahora. Por profunda y fatal que sea la perdida, por importante que sea lo que nos han arrancado de las manos, aunque nos hayamos convertido en alguien completamente distinto y solo conservemos, de lo que antes eramos, una fina capa de piel, a pesar de todo, podemos continuar viviendo, asi, en silencio” – Haruki Murakami

“In ancient times people weren't just 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 everybody 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 other half.” – Haruki Murakami

“You know, they've got these chocolate assortments, and you like some but you don't like others? And you eat all the ones you like, and the only ones left are the ones you don't like as much? I always think about that when something painful comes up. Now I just have topolish these off, and everything'll be OK. Life is a box of chocolates. I suppose you could call it a ...

... philosophy.” – Haruki Murakami