34 Wise Haruki Murakami Quotes On Love, Loneliness, Life And Death
“I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.”
Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’s work trades in strange realities, pianists who can see auras (Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage), worlds where spirits slip from their bodies to make love or kill someone (Kafka on the Shore), and young women who access a parallel existence based on a hint from their cab driver (1Q84).
In his newest book of short stories, Men Without Women, each man in question is striving for (or against) one thing: loss. They choose loneliness, quiet, and the kind of “strength” that involves never asking too much. (Is it becoming clear why in the collection even the paired-off men are “without women”?)
Of his work, he told the Guardian, “You can say that it's a kind of unconscious, subconscious… you have to go down there and come back to the surface. You have to dedicate yourself to that work. You have no extra space to do something else.” In other words, Murakami’s life, though rich in story, is one of solitude, evident through his quotes about love.
When working, he lives by a routine without variation: wake at 4 AM, work five to six hours straight, run or swim, then errands, dinner, and reading before a 9 PM bedtime. It doesn’t leave much time for a social life and, in fact, he refuses most invitations.
But perhaps the nice thing about him suffering it in out through these quotes about life for the sake of his readers is that his books, no matter how magical and strange, seem to very easily access the very real feelings of love, longing, and loneliness that we all experience. While these Haruki Murakami quotes of his wisest words might be best experienced in their original context and the strange worlds in which they surface, they’re enjoyable in small doses, too.
Here just a few Haruki Murakami inspirational quotes that highlight his magical wisdom, and sprinkled within, a few lines that act as instant capsules of heartbreak.
From Kafka on the Shore:
1.
“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”
2.
“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
3.
“A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.”
From The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle:
4.
“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close are we able to come to the person's essence?”
5.
“Have you ever had that feeling that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?”
6.
“Results aside, the ability to have complete faith in another human being is one of the finest qualities a person can possess.”
7.
"A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance."
8.
"Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge."
From 1Q84:
9.
“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life."
10.
“Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.”
11.
“But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.”
12.
“If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation.”
From Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (short story collection):
13.
“I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.”
From South of the Border, West of the Sun:
14.
“'For a while' is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting.”
15.
“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago."
16.
"But there was something in her face that was meant for me alone. Every time we met, I took a good look at her. And loved what I saw."
17.
"But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover."
18.
"People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you can forget, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want."
19.
"The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back the way they were."
From “Tony Takitani” (short story):
20.
“The very fact that he had ceased to be lonely caused him to fear the possibility of becoming lonely again.”
From Sputnik Sweetheart:
21.
“I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.”
22.
“I think most people live in fiction... That's how you keep your fragile body intact.”
23.
“In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins: inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.”
24.
“Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves."
25.
“That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way.”
26.
“Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do — and it feels pretty good.”
From Norwegian Wood:
27.
"A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do, but what he should do."
28.
"Our faces were no more than ten inches apart but she was light years away from me."
29.
"It's good when food tastes good, it's kind of like proof you're alive."
30.
"We're all kind of weird and twisted and drowning."
31.
"I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once."
32.
"'Letters are just pieces of paper,' I said. 'Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.'”
33.
“'Don't feel sorry for yourself,’ he said. ‘Only assh*les do that.’”
34.
“What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.”
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