2,618 Quotes by Haruki Murakami

In any case, suffice it to say I enjoyed hearing about faraway places. I had stocked up a whole store of these places, like a bear getting ready for hibernation. I’d close my eyes, and streets would materialize, rows of houses take shape. I could hear people’s voices, feel the gentle, steady rhythm of their lives, those people so distant, whom I’d probably never know.

I knew that life was pointless, but I couldn't give up on it.

That's what we all do : endlessly take the long way around.

The world is full of ways and means to waste time

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. No car, no car stereo, no silver bracelets, no shuffling, no dark blue tweed suits.

I skipped the thirty-one years between 1938 and 1965 and jumped to the section entitled “Junitaki Today.” Of course, the book’s “today” being 1970, it was hardly today’s “today.” Still, writing the history of one town obviously imposed the necessity of bringing it up to a “today.” And even if such a today soon ceases to be today, no one can deny that it is in fact a today. For if a today ceased to be today, history could not exist as history.

It was as natural and obvious to me as breathing. So I assumed that everyone else was doing it too. When I realized that everyone else was not doing it -- that they couldn't do it even if they tried -- I told myself, 'I'm different from other people, so the life I live will have to be different from theirs.

Kitapus pievelės juodavo vėją užstojanti pušų giraitė, iš už kurios atsklisdavo bangų mūša. Nuožmių Ramiojo vandenyno bangų. Jos ošė sodriais ir niūriais balsais it daugybė susispietusių sielų, šnabždančių kiekviena savo istorijas. Ir atrodė, kad prisidėti prie šio choro ir papasakoti kitų istorijų trokšta dar daugiau sielų.

I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.