2,618 Quotes by Haruki Murakami

If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.

Ich frage mich, ob die Erinnerungen für uns Menschen nicht der Kraftstoff sind, von dem wir leben? Ob diese Erinnerungen wirklich wichtig sind oder nicht, ist für das Weiterleben nicht von Bedeutung. Sie sind nur der Brennstoff.

Anyway, I'm in bed with her, with her bracelets. Her face is a blank, so I darken the lights. Off go her silky undergarments. The bracelets are all she has on. They glint slightly, a pleasant muffled clinking on the sheets. I have a hard-on.Which, halfway down the ladder, is what I noticed. Just great. Why now? Why didn't I get an erection when I needed one? And why was I getting so excited over two lousy bracelets? Especially under this slicker, with the world about to end.

Okay, let’s put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it’s alright if I don’t sleep with you. What I’m saying is I’d like to be as fair as possible. I don’t want to force anything on anybody, any more than I’d want anything forced on me. It’s enough that I feel your presence or see your commas swirling around me.

Every person should decide for himself how happy, or unhappy, our society might be.

Everybody has some one thing they do not want to lose," began the man. "You included. And we are professionals at finding out that very thing. Humans by necessity must have a midway point between their desires and their pride. Just as all objects must have a center of gravity. This is something we can pinpoint. Only when it is gone do people realize it even existed.

That's the most important thing for a sickness like ours: a sense of trust. If I put myself in this person's hands, I'll be OK. If my condition starts to worsen even the slightest bit - if a screw comes loose - he'll notice straight away, and with tremendous care and patience he'll fix it, he'll tighten the screw again, put all the jumped threads back in place. If we have that sense of trust, our sickness stays away.

How can I put this? There's a king of gap between what I think is real and what's really real. I get this feeling like some kind of little something-or-other is there, somewhere inside me... like a burglar is in the house, hiding in a wardrobe... and it comes out every once in a while and messes up whatever order or logic I've established for myself. The way a magnet can make a machine go crazy.

What i'm trying to say is this. A certain kind of shittiness, a certain kind of stagnation, a certain kind of darkness, goes on propogating itself by its own power in its own self-contained cycle. And once it passes a certain point, no one can stop it - even if the person himself wants to stop it.