Top 500 Haruki Murakami Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person’s heart.”

— Haruki Murakami

452. “Results aside, the ability to have complete faith in another human being is one of the finest qualities a person can possess.”

— Haruki Murakami

453. “None of us are ever finished. Everyone is always a work in progress.”

— Haruki Murakami

454. “Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.”

— Haruki Murakami

455. “She was, if anything, on the plain side, at least not the type to attract men wherever she went. But there was something in her face that was meant for me alone. Everytime we met, I took a good look at her. And loved what I saw.”

— Haruki Murakami

456. “Exerting yourself to the limit over and over again, that is the essence of running. Running is painful, but the pain doesn’t leave me, I can take care of it. That agrees with my mentality.”

— Haruki Murakami

457. “I used to run a full marathon in three hours and 25 or 26 minutes. Not any more.”

— Haruki Murakami

458. “If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.”

— Haruki Murakami

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

459. “The passage of time will usually extract the venom of most things and render them harmless.”

— Haruki Murakami

460. “All things in my novels are real for me. Some western critics said that Garcia Marquez’s novels are magic realism. However, I believe that Marquez must have experienced everything in his novels.”

— Haruki Murakami

Featured in: Real Quotes

461. “But metaphors can reduce the distance... metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.”

— Haruki Murakami

462. “When microorganisms die, they make oil; when huge timbers fall, they make coal. But everything here was pure, unadulterated rubbish that didn’t make anything. Where does a busted videodeck get you?”

— Haruki Murakami

463. “You have to patiently learn to live together with your shadow. And carefully observe the darkness that resides within you. Sometimes in a dark tunnel you have to confront your own dark side.”

— Haruki Murakami

464. “One day, I lost sight of her. I happened to glance away for a moment, and when I turned back, she had disappeared.”

— Haruki Murakami

465. “Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?”

— Haruki Murakami

466. “The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape.”

— Haruki Murakami

467. “What would tomorrow bring? I wondered. Both hands on the wheel, I closed my eyes. I didn’t feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing. What would become of me tomorrow I did not know.”

— Haruki Murakami

468. “The most dangerous creature here would have to be me. So maybe I’m just scared of my own shadow.”

— Haruki Murakami

469. “I wondered if she was trying to convey something to me, something she could not put into words – something prior to words that she could not grasp within herself and which therefore had no hope of ever turning into words.”

— Haruki Murakami

470. “As I already explaned, I don’t have any form. I’m a conceptual metaphysical object.”

— Haruki Murakami

471. “I wasn’t particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don’t have to die the next.”

— Haruki Murakami

472. “The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts.”

— Haruki Murakami

473. “Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life – and for me, for writing as well. I believe many runners would agree.”

— Haruki Murakami

474. “Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up.”

— Haruki Murakami

475. “The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the rimes.”

— Haruki Murakami

476. “Because I have no sense of self. I have no personality, no brilliant color. I have nothing to offer. That’s always been my problem. I feel like an empty vessel. I have a shape, I guess, as a container, but there’s nothing inside. I just can’t see myself as the right person for her. I think that the more time passes, and the more she knows about me, the more disappointed Sara will be, and the more she’ll choose to distance herself from me.”

— Haruki Murakami

477. “There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can’t. And time passing is one thing that can’t be redone. Come this far, and you can’t go back.”

— Haruki Murakami

478. “When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.”

— Haruki Murakami

Featured in: Real Quotes

479. “I was impressed by the variety of dreams and goals that life could offer.”

— Haruki Murakami

480. “The good thing about writing book is that you can dream while you are awake...”

— Haruki Murakami

Featured in: Book Quotes

481. “He placed this doubt inside a drawer in his mind labeled “Pending” and postponed any further consideration. He had many such drawers inside him, with numerous doubts and questions tucked away.”

— Haruki Murakami

482. “We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever.”

— Haruki Murakami

483. “For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.”

— Haruki Murakami

484. “All you have to do is wait,” I explained. “Sit tight and wait for the right moment. Not try to change anything by force, just watch the drift of things. Make an effort to cast a fair eye on everything. If you do that, you just naturally know what to do. But everyone’s always too busy. They’re too talented, their schedules are too full. They’re too interested in themselves to think about what’s fair.”

— Haruki Murakami

485. “En la vida de los hombres hay un punto a partir del cual ya no podemos retroceder. Y, en algunos casos, existe otro a partir del cual ya no podemos seguir avanzando.”

— Haruki Murakami

486. “Something will work out tomorrow, I thought. And if not, then tomorrow I’ll do some thinking. Ob – la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on.”

— Haruki Murakami

487. “Maybe the only thing I can definitely say about is this: That’s life. Maybe the only thing we can do is accept it, without really knowing what’s going on.”

— Haruki Murakami

488. “I don’t know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I’m pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.”

— Haruki Murakami

489. “There’s nothing left here. Not one thing left for you.”

— Haruki Murakami

490. “Oshima once used the term hollow men. Well, that’s exactly what I’ve become. There’s a void inside me, a blank that’s slowly expanding, devouring what’s left of who I am. I can hear it happening. I’m totally lost, my identity dying. There’s no direction where I am, no sky, no ground.”

— Haruki Murakami

491. “She was seriously in love, but she never made demands.”

— Haruki Murakami

492. “To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts.”

— Haruki Murakami

493. “When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.”

— Haruki Murakami

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

494. “If I choose to write about sheep, it’s just because I happened to write about sheep. There is no deep significance.”

— Haruki Murakami

495. “Love and used Subarus were two different things. Weren’t they?”

— Haruki Murakami

496. “In the same way that people stare up at the sky to see the moon every night, yet understand next to nothing about it.”

— Haruki Murakami

497. “Tsukuru Tazaki had nowhere he had to go. This was like a running theme of his life. He had no place he had to go to, no place to come back to. He never did, and he didn’t now. The only place for him was where he was now.”

— Haruki Murakami

498. “Whether it’s good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what’s most important is what you can’t see but can feel in your heart.”

— Haruki Murakami

499. “I think of myself as more the non-turn-on type. so when I do get turned on, I don’t trust it, I have to investigate the source.”

— Haruki Murakami

500. “She only felt revulsion for any kind if religious fundamentalists. The very thought if such people’s intolerant worldview, their inflated sense of their own superiority, and thei callous imposition of their own beliefs on others was enough to fill her with rage.”

— Haruki Murakami