Haruki Murakami

So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action?

The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one’s eyes without seeing anything.

A deserted library in the morning - there's something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully.

let the wind change direction a little bit, and their cries turned to whispers.

Your work should be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience.

Exhaustion pays no mind to age or beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods.

I’ve built a wall around me, never letting anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself

Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of an empty shell.

We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died longe ago.Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when death claim me, no doubt I would walk along by that faint light in the brief instant before being flung once again into the abyss of nothingness

The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the rimes.

The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape.

sometimes i'd wake up at two or three in the morning and not be able to fall asleep again. i'd get out of bed, go to the kitchen, and pour myself a whiskey. glass in hand, i'd look down at the darkened cemetary across teh way and the headlights of the cars on the road. the moments of time linking night and dawn were long and dark. if i could cry, it might make things easier. but what would i cry over? i was too self centered to cry for other people, too old to cry for myself.

How many Sundays - how many hundreds of Sundays like this - lay ahead of me? “Quiet, peaceful, and lonely,” I said aloud to myself. On Sundays, I didn't wind my spring.

Don't tell me anymore. You should have your dream, as the old woman told you to. I understand how you feel, but if you put those feelings into words they will turn into lies. (from Thailand)

I spent thirty-three years in another man's shadow. I went everywhere he went, I helped him with everything he did. I was in a sense a part of him. When you live like that for a long time, you gradually lose track of what it is you yourself really want out of life

The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living.

It was a strange feeling, like touching a void.

Wasn't he the one who said you shouldn't trust anybody who calls himself an ordinar man? - Naoko

In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion.

Is it against the law for me to know it?