Haruki Murakami

Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person’s heart and dissolve it.

Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.

It feels like everything's been decided in advance that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It's like my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch.

But knowing what I don’t want to do doesn’t help me figure out what I do want to do. I could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I don’t have an image of the one thing I really want to do. That’s my problem now. I can’t find the image.

Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.

You’re really cute, Midori,” I corrected myself. “What do you mean really cute?” “So cute the mountains crumble and the oceans dry up.

What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me.

That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution

You know what I should do?" Hoshino asked excited. "Of course," the cat said. "What'd I tell you? Cats know everything. Not like dogs.

In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.

To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm.

There is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.

Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.

Everytime you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart.

My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart.

Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but loose you.

As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself.

Each person feels pain in his own way, each has his own scars.

Distance might not solve anything, no matter how far you run.

Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.