Top Murakami Quotes

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.

I feel like I've swallowed a cloudy sky

Listening to the music while stretching her body close to its limit, she was able to attain a mysterious calm. She was simultaneously the torturer and the tortured, the forcer and the forced. This sen...

There is an instinctive withdrawal for the sake of preservation, a closure that assumes the order of completion. Winter is a season unto itself.

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 maintenanc...

The better you were able to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality.

I dream, sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.

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...

Maybe you didn't want to get married, or get tied down?'Tsukuru shook his head. 'No, I don't think that was it. I'm the sort of person who craves stability.

You can have tons of talent, but it won't necessarily keep you fed. If you have sharp instincts, through, you'll never go hungry.

When I went on anyway, my body began to grow cold, and I thought I was dead. Face pale, my dead self sat down on a bench and began to turn toward my real self, who was watching this hallucination on t...

What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it blocks my throat and makes it hard to breathe. Somehow I swallow it back, finally choosing another. "Are memories such an important thing?""It depen...

Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than revenge, Aomame said.Winston Churchill. As I recall it, though, he was making excuses for the British Empire’s budget deficits. I...

Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy.

Of course, they're not clowning around to make me laugh. They're doing their best to live very lives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think that's cool.

But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn’t it?

It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It's just as Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibility. Turn this on its head and you could say that where the...

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it blocks my throat and makes it hard to breathe. Somehow I swallow it back, finally choosing another.

And I really wanted to see you, too, she said. When I couldn’t see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really need you. You’re...