2,618 Quotes by Haruki Murakami

Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It is like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. Things will go where they are supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it is time for them to be hurt. Life is like that.

There are symbolic dreams-dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities-realities that symbolize a dream

And now here I was, a first person singular. If I'd chosen a different direction, most likely I wouldn't be here. But still - who is that in the mirror?

Still, the time I spent with her was more precious than anything. She helped me forget the undertone of loneliness in my life. She expanded the outer edges of my world, helped me draw a deep, soothing breath. Only Sumire could do that for me.

It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the appropriate point in a conversation to say goodbye

...I think it's an amazing achievement to find even one specific thing that you're interested in.

It's precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive -- or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself.

The rain that fell on the city runs down the dark gutters and empties into the sea without even soaking the ground

Our faces were no more than ten inches apart, but she was light years away from me.