You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.
I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn’t last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Dreaming is an essential aspect of life that provides a temporary escape, but reality ultimately prevails.
This quote by Haruki Murakami reflects the dichotomy between dreams and reality. It emphasizes the importance of dreaming as a way to explore one’s aspirations and imagination, yet it acknowledges the inevitability of returning to the practicalities of life. Murakami suggests that while dreams offer solace and creativity, the waking world requires attention, reminding us that both dreaming and reality are integral to our existence.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about pursuing goals: 'As Haruki Murakami said, we must embrace our dreams, although we always have to return to reality.'
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.
Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.
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.
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.
Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.
Similar quotes
Stories are compasses and architecture, we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice.
When I am angry, I pray God to swing our globe into the fiery sun and prevent the sorrows of the not-yet-born: but when I am content, I want to lie forever in the shade, till I become a shade myself.
One can't believe impossible things.
The nationalist has a broad hatred and a narrow love.
All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.
If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?