I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing with. I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person’s attitude so that they wouldn’t get any closer. I didn’t easily swallow what other people told me. My only passions were books and music
Haruki Murakami
Related Beauty set up distance between other people and me. It warped their behavior. CANDICE BERGEN Sure, I went through my 'J'accuse' phase. I was so angry for so long, I could hardly hav... FRANK MCCOURT If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increas... , THE OTHER AMERICA, 1962 I didn’t relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn’t relate well to people, ... STEPHENIE MEYER My marks were always bad, and I was a bad influence on other children, so they would explain to my m... RAM CHARAN Music is the reason I started talking to people. When I started singing in bars and trains, I began ... BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE I’ll always be broken,” I went on. “Because when I came here, no one fixed me. It’s not that... TABITHA FREEMAN I love my lecture tours. I get up onstage. I have my stack of books and a glass of water and a micro... SUZAN-LORI PARKS The recruiters came and talked with us in school, and I remember it like yesterday. I wasn't interes... STEPHEN DAU Sometimes it was difficult to make friends and be social in school because I was always practicing w... NANCY KERRIGAN At the same time, I was listening to black music, and I began to think that the best musicians were ... HENRY FLYNT I began having problems with Warner Bros. They were letting other people do films, and I wasn't doin... CLINT WALKER A friend of mine once told me that I can't screw up when I play my own music. I also take voice ... LISA LOEB I don't think they did know what to do with me, ... But what they did do is establish an audience fo... ARETHA FRANKLIN Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anythin... J. K. ROWLING so often my own emotions were hidden not only from other people but from myself. or perhaps it was t... MARGOT LIVESEY ...I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn't have met, and who didn't like each oth... JOJO MOYES Before I went through that situation, and during the time I was in there, I know there were people w... GLORIA TREVI It only surprised me up until around 1977, ... I had thought we were going to have a considerable au... GARY GYGAX . . . I lay on the bed and lost myself in the stories. I liked that. Books were safer than oth... NEIL GAIMAN I dislike interaction. The less I say the better I feel. I was naturally a loner. I didn’t want co... CHARLES BUKOWSKI People would ask me why I was doing what I was doing - but I always told them that I just loved to s... NANCY KERRIGAN When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to ... JOHN LENNON BEFORE THE HUMANS came we didn’t speak so much of certain things. Before the humans came we didn�... CHINA MIéVILLE My orphan heart thought love was to complete someone else and to be completed by them. I didn’t un... LACEY STURM God spoke to me and told me I should make a library for my church, Woods Presbyterian, because I had... FRANCES GRIGSBY I have kept a diary, WITHNAIL AND I Music helped me to get out of a rough period in my life when I really struggled to see any future fo... BENJAMIN BOOKER I listen mostly to live music, and mostly my musical experience was playing music with other people. LINDA RONSTADT I can't help other people's frustrations. I don't owe people anything. If people would l... DAVID GILMOUR I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countl... IAN FLEMING I see myself as a composer who plays music and likes to play with other people, and not just as a so... TAJ MAHAL Warhol was definitely an inspiration when I was younger. I wouldn't quantify his sort of influen... DUSTIN YELLIN While I was in jail, I was so mad at myself and so frustrated about my situation and how I let mysel... BOBBY DIXON I was baptized in the eighth grade, but I didn't really understand what it meant. Then it was in col... BARRY SANDERS Anxiety kicked in. I lacked people skills all my life. Any normal human interaction was foreign to m... TIA ARTEMIS I dislike interaction. The less I say the better I feel. I was naturally a loner. I didn’t want co... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Because of my childhood where I was constantly by myself, I always feel lonely. I have a lot of peop... NATALIA VODIANOVA They were spitting on me, so naturally I spit back. Then all hell broke loose. But that was only one... JEFF PTAK With the MacArthur grant, I realized that people have high expectations of me, that they were placin... JARED DIAMOND Just between you and me and the lamppost, Dylan could easily be any girl's perfect other half... JAMES PATTERSON I was in the winter of my life- and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fel... LANA DEL REY If people would like to come to my concerts I'd love them to come. And if they like the music th... DAVID GILMOUR Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the in... J. K. ROWLING I remember people saying that they brought cousins or people to the set and they had no idea that wa... AMANDA BYNES I force people to have coffee with me, just because I don't trust that a friendship can be maint... JOHN CUSACK I love pretending to be other people. The more unlike me they are the better - I find other people e... JACKI WEAVER I was homeless for about 8 months, I refused to live with my dad or anyone for that matter. So I sta... ERIC WEST I think the only difference between me and other people is that when I hear of an interesting histor... EMMA DONOGHUE I've moved around so much my whole life, and I've gotten so used to being the Other in situa... ABIGAIL WASHBURN I was unhappy for a long time, and very lonesome, living with my grandmother. Then it was that books... LANGSTON HUGHES People who knew me and sympathized with me were determined to set me up with the other people they s... B.J. NOVAK I felt more comfortable playing other people than being myself, when I was a kid. And then, the tabl... JAY RYAN Old women especially are invisible. I have been to parties where no one knows who I am, so I am igno... RUTH RENDELL Kindness. The only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You'll get nowhere with an a... MIKHAIL BULGAKOV There are always messages, even enigmas to be searched, mysteries to be solved in all of my books. I... ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES One similarity I see between peers and some of the people who read my books is that comics were defi... BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird. FRANK ZAPPA Oh, yeah. The people are so wonderful and friendly. I have never been to Mississippi so it was a tre... DEBORAH BROWN Seems to me, that the worlds are moving closer together rather than one invading the other. I believ... ELVIS COSTELLO I asked Alan if he knew of any mentoring programs, and he told me to put my resume together and he'd... DARREN ALEXANDER Growing up, I had a terrible pudding-bowl haircut. I used to cut it myself, and I'd sew my own c... BECKI NEWTON I thought it wouldn’t work, but I didn’t know it wouldn’t work, so I didn’t say anything. Th... ALYSSA MASTROMONACO My brother and I had a reputation for telling real bad jokes. We told the worst jokes in town. As a ... WALLY HIRSTEIN The only people who have doubts about the sincerity of my music are people who come to it relatively... RIZ AHMED I used to spend so much time reacting and responding to everyone else that my life had no direction.... MELODY BEATTIE So I saw that there was only me. There was only me who could worry about what was happening here, in... MARKUS ZUSAK Stop thinking, and end your problems. What difference between yes and no? What difference ... LAO TZU So what’s your story?” he asked, sitting down next to me at a safe distance. “I already told y... JOHN GREEN I went out with a guy who once told me I didn’t need to drink to make myself more fun to be around... CHELSEA HANDLER Growing up, I took so many cues from books. They taught me most of what I knew about what people did... NEIL GAIMAN I was preaching to the people at the Superdome because they were only looking after themselves, not ... CHRISTIAN CHURCH I didn't go to bookshops to buy. That's a little bourgeois. I went because they were civilized place... JERRY PINTO I realized I was more convincing to myself and to the people who were listening when I actually said... URSULA BURNS I would listen to how they told the story, to what elements they used, to how it sounded, and that... ED BRADLEY I'm a serious eater and a seriously hungry person, so I set out on that path to figure it out fo... SALLY SCHNEIDER Cutting my roots and leaving my home and family when I was 18 years old forced me to build my home i... CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I wo... HOWARD IKEMOTO I don't have to edit myself, ... I get to be me, warts and all, and that's ultimately what people wa... GREG BEHRENDT We tend to get wrapped up in the music, but a teacher once told me that songs are monologues set to ... JEFF DILLON The only people I ever get irritated with are the ones who announce, using my Twitter handle, that t... NEIL GAIMAN I didn’t want words. But there certainly was something that I wanted. And they were definitel... WATARU WATARI I realize at one point, that I was being followed, and then I began to see the surveillance that was... GLORIA NAYLOR I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew ... SUSANNA KAYSEN I joined MySpace in September 2003. At that time no one was on there at all. I felt like a loser whi... TILA TEQUILA If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with othe... ANNE FRANK The stronger a person's "I" is, the smaller his capacity to become one with anybody. The "I" is a wa... BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH I was an only child until I was 14, and there were no other kids around the area really. So I spent ... JACK REYNOR If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly in hand before I mix with other peo... ANNE FRANK At Jerusalem, I went to the mosque and sat down. A man asked me what I wanted. I told him I was a Mu... YUSUF ISLAM I don't really care what other people see me as. I seriously don't. I've always worried ... KAJOL I really do feel like I know myself, and I'm so happy to be by myself and I'm so happy to be... DREE HEMINGWAY They told me they were going to do it, but I had my doubts. I was wondering if they'd be able to swa... GEOFF HOGAN As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I... CHARLIE CHAPLIN I just am fascinated by other female artists, probably because I feel a kinship with them, no matter... SHIRLEY MANSON I had to explain that I was disappointed in myself, but they got a read that I was angry with an att... MARLON BYRD They seem to find me. No matter what market I've ever worked in, I seem to draw lower-end stuff for ... BARBARA HOWLAND We will lower the tax burden on middle-class Americans by asking the very wealthy to pay their fair ... , "PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST", 1992 [The elders] yelled at us, told us we were traitors, enemies of the people. They told me I was a sco... JUMADURDY OVEZOV When people treat you mean, you dislike them for that, but not because of their person, who they are... B. B. KING
More Haruki Murakami
És com si en aquella època cada nit també mirés una lluna de gel a través d'un ull de bou. Una ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Desde el principio estuvimos unidos en la frontera entre la vida y la muerte. HARUKI MURAKAMI Aquel silencio recordaba todas las lluvias del mundo cayendo sobre la faz de la Tierra. HARUKI MURAKAMI A veces me siento como el portero de un museo. Un museo vacío, desierto, que ya nadie visita. Y yo ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Dentro de aquella casa con las persianas cerradas, sentí un odio profundo hacia la primavera. Odié... HARUKI MURAKAMI Quizás yo no soy muy inteligente. Pertenezco al pueblo. Pero ¿no es el pueblo el que hace funciona... HARUKI MURAKAMI –Watanabe, ¿puedes explicarme la diferencia entre el condicional simple y el condicional perfecto... HARUKI MURAKAMI En este mundo hay gente que, a pesar de estar dotadas de un talento excepcional, son incapaces de re... HARUKI MURAKAMI En el mundo exterior la gente no suele hablar con franqueza, ¿no es cierto? HARUKI MURAKAMI Eso es lo que éramos el uno para el otro. Al morirse, ya no supe cómo relacionarme con la gente. D... HARUKI MURAKAMI Está exteriorizando sus emociones. Lo preocupante es cuando no logra sacarlas fuera. Se acumulan en... HARUKI MURAKAMI Había pensado tantas veces en ello que acabé distorsionando la noción del tiempo. HARUKI MURAKAMI Of course, she must be sleeping, sleeping deeply, wrapped in the darkness of that strange little wor... HARUKI MURAKAMI I must be in love with this woman, Sumire realized with a start. No mistake about it. Ice is co... HARUKI MURAKAMI Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointles... HARUKI MURAKAMI Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where p... HARUKI MURAKAMI Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And the... HARUKI MURAKAMI The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of ni... HARUKI MURAKAMI Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landscape, an overwhelming h... HARUKI MURAKAMI When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first on... HARUKI MURAKAMI Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart. HARUKI MURAKAMI From the girl who sat before me now...surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small a... HARUKI MURAKAMI If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is t... HARUKI MURAKAMI Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead become angry—at someone else or at herself—whic... HARUKI MURAKAMI I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do. HARUKI MURAKAMI here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didn... HARUKI MURAKAMI I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this... HARUKI MURAKAMI Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes.... HARUKI MURAKAMI No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories. HARUKI MURAKAMI And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive... HARUKI MURAKAMI Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just le... HARUKI MURAKAMI Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It's like taking a boat out on... HARUKI MURAKAMI لا أحد يحب العزلة. أنا فقط أكره الخيبة HARUKI MURAKAMI Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made... HARUKI MURAKAMI I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and si... HARUKI MURAKAMI It's because of you when I'm in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern. HARUKI MURAKAMI She's letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings bui... HARUKI MURAKAMI Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to thin... HARUKI MURAKAMI People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die. HARUKI MURAKAMI So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you? HARUKI MURAKAMI Not that we were incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about. HARUKI MURAKAMI I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would t... HARUKI MURAKAMI I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my ... HARUKI MURAKAMI What makes us the most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal. HARUKI MURAKAMI If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark HARUKI MURAKAMI I really like you, Midori. A lot.” “How much is a lot?” “Like a spring bear,” I ... HARUKI MURAKAMI What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously. HARUKI MURAKAMI Only the Dead stay seventeen forever. HARUKI MURAKAMI No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, n... HARUKI MURAKAMI I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and... HARUKI MURAKAMI Letters are just pieces of paper," I said. "Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt. HARUKI MURAKAMI I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- t... HARUKI MURAKAMI I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you her... HARUKI MURAKAMI But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where... HARUKI MURAKAMI Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that. HARUKI MURAKAMI What happens when people open their hearts?" "They get better. HARUKI MURAKAMI Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of anoth... HARUKI MURAKAMI Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more... HARUKI MURAKAMI Things change everyday. With each new dawn, it is not the same world as before. And you’re not the... HARUKI MURAKAMI Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. HARUKI MURAKAMI I'm your phantom dance partner. I'm your shadow. I'm not anything more. HARUKI MURAKAMI It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story . HARUKI MURAKAMI In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can... HARUKI MURAKAMI Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the ligh... HARUKI MURAKAMI Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love ... HARUKI MURAKAMI If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets. HARUKI MURAKAMI No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we ... HARUKI MURAKAMI ''Fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandst... HARUKI MURAKAMI I learned that realism can come in all shapes and sizes. The world is big enough for different ... HARUKI MURAKAMI So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price ... HARUKI MURAKAMI No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. HARUKI MURAKAMI ...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are t... HARUKI MURAKAMI We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on liv... HARUKI MURAKAMI You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy ... HARUKI MURAKAMI That's when I gave up pinball. When the times comes, everybody gives up pinball. Nothing more to it. HARUKI MURAKAMI I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know ... HARUKI MURAKAMI If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings. HARUKI MURAKAMI When Debussy was seeming to get nowhere with an opera he was composing, he put it this way: "I spent... HARUKI MURAKAMI Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphys... 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 My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some... HARUKI MURAKAMI If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you HARUKI MURAKAMI You can have tons of talent, but it won't necessarily keep you fed. If you have sharp instincts, thr... HARUKI MURAKAMI I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different... HARUKI MURAKAMI For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and ... HARUKI MURAKAMI I didn't want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individua... HARUKI MURAKAMI They tell us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,but I don't believe that." he said. ... HARUKI MURAKAMI And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lone... HARUKI MURAKAMI Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom... HARUKI MURAKAMI No truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Listen up - there's no war that will end all wars. HARUKI MURAKAMI I do feel that I’ve managed to make something I could maybe call my world…over time…little by ... HARUKI MURAKAMI This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled ... HARUKI MURAKAMI I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning. HARUKI MURAKAMI Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny th... HARUKI MURAKAMI Sometimes I feel as if I'm racing with my own shadow, Korogi says. But that's one thing I'll never b... HARUKI MURAKAMI sound is of no use to human evolution. in fact, it gets in the way. HARUKI MURAKAMI Yeah. The more languages you know the better. And I've got a knack for them. I taught myself French ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Languages are like games. You learn the rules for one, and they all work the same way. Like women. HARUKI MURAKAMI Because, in the final analysis, the language we speak constitutes who we are as people. HARUKI MURAKAMI We're on the border of this world, speaking a common language. That's all. HARUKI MURAKAMI Learning another language is like becoming another person. HARUKI MURAKAMI Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language. HARUKI MURAKAMI If you look at it the other way round, that's the only reason why this world is inside of me. Maybe ... HARUKI MURAKAMI To know one’s own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one’s own face with ... HARUKI MURAKAMI If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation. HARUKI MURAKAMI Yo no soy tan fuerte. A mi me importa que me entiendan. Hay personas a quienes quiero comprender y q... HARUKI MURAKAMI In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An inte... HARUKI MURAKAMI Maybe it's just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip to come home. But falling in love is always a pr... HARUKI MURAKAMI When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That's what I think. It's jus... HARUKI MURAKAMI We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. like a small flame. ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time. HARUKI MURAKAMI For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by ... HARUKI MURAKAMI I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long dis... HARUKI MURAKAMI All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a p... HARUKI MURAKAMI Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memori... HARUKI MURAKAMI Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to ope... HARUKI MURAKAMI And, well, mine are kind of on the heavy side anyway. The first day or two, I don't want to do ANYTH... HARUKI MURAKAMI No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they... HARUKI MURAKAMI From the moment of my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was... HARUKI MURAKAMI I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than me. I used to think it was such... HARUKI MURAKAMI I shouted into the phone, but there was no reply. Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke fr... HARUKI MURAKAMI Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting. HARUKI MURAKAMI Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means... HARUKI MURAKAMI There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart. HARUKI MURAKAMI Hajime," she began, "the sad truth is that some things can't go backwards. Once they start going for... HARUKI MURAKAMI We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpec... HARUKI MURAKAMI Once she was out of the car and gone, my world was suddenly hollow and meaningless. HARUKI MURAKAMI No one could say how long that life would last. Whatever has form can disappear in an instant. HARUKI MURAKAMI Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body fallin... HARUKI MURAKAMI She was, if anything, on the plain side, at least not the type to attract men wherever she went. But... HARUKI MURAKAMI sometimes i'd wake up at two or three in the morning and not be able to fall asleep again. i'd get o... HARUKI MURAKAMI Inside that darkness, i saw rain falling on the sea. Rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no one ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Once thing goes wrong, then the whole house of cards collapses. And there's no way you can extricate... HARUKI MURAKAMI I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened t... HARUKI MURAKAMI Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality-call ... HARUKI MURAKAMI I always feel as if I'm struggling to become someone else. As if I'm trying to find a new place, gra... HARUKI MURAKAMI Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly... HARUKI MURAKAMI Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn't kee... HARUKI MURAKAMI But you know Hajime, some feelings cause us pain because they remain. HARUKI MURAKAMI Reading was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night, in scho... HARUKI MURAKAMI Even castles in the sky can do with a fresh coat of paint. HARUKI MURAKAMI Lots of different ways to live and lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a... HARUKI MURAKAMI If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. I... HARUKI MURAKAMI The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once they start going forward, no m... HARUKI MURAKAMI I wasn't in love with her. And she didn't love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What ... HARUKI MURAKAMI I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things... HARUKI MURAKAMI Have you heard of the illness hysteria siberiana ? Try to imagine this: You're a farmer, livin... HARUKI MURAKAMI No matter where i go, i still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but i... HARUKI MURAKAMI For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like ... HARUKI MURAKAMI I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, someth... HARUKI MURAKAMI For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured.At least by the person who's waiting. HARUKI MURAKAMI You can see a person's whole life in the cancer they get. HARUKI MURAKAMI When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked... HARUKI MURAKAMI Most near-future fictions are boring. It's always dark and always raining, and people are so unh... HARUKI MURAKAMI George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I'm 100 percent fiction writer... I don... HARUKI MURAKAMI You live by yourself for a stretch of time and you get to staring at different objects. Sometimes yo... HARUKI MURAKAMI I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at ... HARUKI MURAKAMI If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets. HARUKI MURAKAMI These days I just can't seem to say what I mean [...]. I just can't. Every time I try to say somethi... HARUKI MURAKAMI From his shoulder on down, the Rat felt the supple weight of her body. An odd sensation, that weight... HARUKI MURAKAMI Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we t... HARUKI MURAKAMI Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you. HARUKI MURAKAMI He would eventually have to pass through the forest, but he felt no fear. Of course - the forest was... HARUKI MURAKAMI The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life—bigger and deeper than anyth... HARUKI MURAKAMI Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted. HARUKI MURAKAMI The things she most wanted to tell him would lose their meaning the moment she put them into words. HARUKI MURAKAMI Things can be seen better in the darkness," he said, as if he had just seen into her mind. "But the ... HARUKI MURAKAMI The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the... HARUKI MURAKAMI A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born but you can choose ... HARUKI MURAKAMI They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were n... HARUKI MURAKAMI Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off. HARUKI MURAKAMI But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words. HARUKI MURAKAMI I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books. HARUKI MURAKAMI If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even... HARUKI MURAKAMI Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jo... HARUKI MURAKAMI I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Night... HARUKI MURAKAMI I have always liked running, so it wasn't particularly difficult to make it a habit. All you nee... HARUKI MURAKAMI Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering. HARUKI MURAKAMI Nah, I shook my head, things that come out of nowhere go back to nowhere, that’s all. W... HARUKI MURAKAMI We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died... HARUKI MURAKAMI It seems to me that very sad things always contain an element of the comical HARUKI MURAKAMI I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book;... HARUKI MURAKAMI Maybe I am fated to always be alone, Tsukuru found himself thinking. People came to him, but in the ... HARUKI MURAKAMI Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness. HARUKI MURAKAMI The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be lear... HARUKI MURAKAMI People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring. HARUKI MURAKAMI Wherever there's hope there's a trial. HARUKI MURAKAMI The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's... HARUKI MURAKAMI I'm just ordinary guy, ordinary family, ordinary education, ordinary face, ordinary exam results, or... HARUKI MURAKAMI He wasn't normally conscious of it, but there was one part of his body that was extremely sensitive,... HARUKI MURAKAMI Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are ... HARUKI MURAKAMI