“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
— Haruki Murakami
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
“I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do.”
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”
“Be fearless, be brave, be bold, love yourself.”
“When I'm running I don't have to talk to anybody and don't have to listen to anybody. This is a part of my day I can't do without.”
“Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don't know a soul?”
“Sometimes it’s not the people who change, it’s the mask that falls off.”
“Learning another language is like becoming another person.”
“All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.”
“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
“As time goes on, you’ll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn’t, doesn’t. Time solves most things. And what time can’t solve, you have to solve yourself.”
“Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.”
“I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.”
“I’m all alone, but I’m not lonely.”
“I move, therefore I am.”
“You don’t have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.”
“Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.”
“As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around.”
“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
“Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.”
“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”
“One foot in front of the other. Repeat as often as necessary to finish.”
“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.”
“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”
“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”
“Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.”
“A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.”
“If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.”
“The thing I’m most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what I’m going to do. Of not knowing what I’m doing right now.”
“You’re not a kid anymore. You have the right to choose your own life. You can start again. If you want a cat, all you have to do is choose a life in which you can have a cat. It’s simple. It’s your right.”
“The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.”
“People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can’t predict it. That’s love.”
“Everything in life is a metaphor.”
“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person.”
“You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them.”
“Say it before you run out of time. Say it before it’s too late. Say what you’re feeling. Waiting is a mistake.”
“A theory is a battlefield in your head.”
“To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm.”
“I am nothing. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.”
“People’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.”
“Start making excuses and there’s no end to it. I can’t live that kind of life.”
“I’m a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.”
“Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.”
“I’ve built a wall around me, never letting anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself.”
“It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.”
“Will you wait for me forever?”
“If you think of someone enough, you’re sure to meet them again.”
“No matter how honestly you open up to someone, there are still things you cannot reveal.”
“Only the Dead stay seventeen forever.”
“You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you.”
“But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.”
“Distance might not solve anything, no matter how far you run.”
“I never made any plan before writing, however I succeeded. I enjoyed writing with excitement ,“what happen on the next page?””
“Love can rebuild the world, they say, so everything’s possible when it comes to love.”
“Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”
“If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well.”
“I’m not human. I’m a piece of machinery. I don’t need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead.”
“Chance encounters are what keep us going.”
“Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.”
“No matter what the situation may be, I still take pleasure in witnessing the joy of others.”
“Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.”
“That’s all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every day. When you don’t have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out-so far out you can’t follow them all the way to the end.”
“Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn’t control you – you should control them.”
“There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.”
“Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of an empty shell.”
“I may not be the most likable person in the world, but I try not to upset people.”
“Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution because it follows 67?”
“I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.”
“Huge organizations and me don’t get along. They’re too inflexible, waste too much time, and have too many stupid people.”
“A friend to kill time is a friend sublime.”
“I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.”
“It’s just like Yeats said. In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there’s no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.”
“Time, of course, topples everyone in its path equally- the way that driver beats his old horse until it dies. But the thrashing we receive is one of frightful gentleness. Few of us even realize that we are being beaten.”
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts.”
“All imperfections are forced upon the imperfect, so the ‘perfect’ can live content and oblivious.”
“I feel like I’ve swallowed a cloudy sky.”
“She’s letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you’re in big trouble.”
“What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.”
“Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but loose you.”
“I don’t know, there’s something about you. Say there’s an hourglass: the sand’s about to run out. Someone like you can always be counted on to turn the thing over.”
“As long as I kept my body moving I could forget about the emptiness inside.”
“What I feel for her is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being.”
“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.”
“There weren’t any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn’t fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees.”
“Not just beautiful, though – the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me.”
“We knew exactly what we wanted in each other. And even so, it ended. One day it stopped, as if the film simply slipped off the reel.”
“I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run.”
“People lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off and turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned.”
“Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.”
“Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.”
“Running taught me to have faith in my skills as a writer. I learned how much I can demand of myself, when I need a break, and when the break starts to get too long. I known how hard I am allowed to push myself.”
“Exhaustion pays no mind to age or beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods.”
“Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.”
“Some things, you know, if you say them, it makes them not true?”
“One of these days they’ll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.”
“This is no honky-tonk parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon.”
“I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something.”
“I can be hurt, you know. I can get as exhausted as anybody else. I can feel so bad I want to cry, too.”
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