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 MurakamiRead
There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a longing for a different, simpler life and hints at existential questioning.
In this quote, Haruki Murakami expresses a sense of dissatisfaction with his own life, suggesting that he would have preferred the simplicity and peace of a shepherd's existence under the night sky. This yearning for a different reality indicates deeper themes of identity, purpose, and connection to nature, inviting readers to contemplate their own life choices and aspirations.
Themes
LifeLongingExistenceNatureIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about personal fulfillment during a philosophy class.
More from Haruki Murakami
All quotes →They take the circuits out of people’s brains that make it possible for them to think for themselves. Their world is like the one that George Orwell depicted in his novel. I’m sure you realize that there are plenty of people who are looking for exactly that kind of brain death. It makes life a lot easier. You don’t have to think about difficult things, just shut up and do what your superiors tell you to do.
Haruki MurakamiRead
Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.
Haruki MurakamiRead
I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.
Haruki MurakamiRead
Everybody burns out in this world; amateur, pro, it doesn't matter, they all burn out, they all get hurt, the OK guys and the not-OK guys both. That's why everybody takes out a little insurance. I've got some too, here at the bottom of the heap. That way, you manage to survive if you burn out. If you're all by yourself and don't belong anywhere, you go down once, and you're out. Finished.
Haruki MurakamiRead
Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.
Haruki MurakamiRead
Similar quotes
A government or a party gets the people it deserves and sooner or later a people gets the government it deserves.
Frantz FanonRead
She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.
Edith WhartonRead
They looked as if nothing had ever touched them--all well-mothered, protected, with a soft sheen of contentment. None of them had ever been in jail, or worked hard with their hands, or even gotten a traffic ticket. Skimmed-milk jollies, the whole bunch.
Charles BukowskiRead
Want of imagination makes things unreal enough to be destroyed. By imagination I mean knowledge and love. I mean compassion. People of power kill children, the old send the young to die, because they have no imagination. They have power. Can you have power and imagination at the same time? Can you kill people you don’t know and have compassion for them at the same time?
Wendell BerryRead
The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish drying on sand.
Margaret AtwoodRead
America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.
Norman MailerRead