Haruki Murakami Quotes
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201. “You got to know your limits. Once is enough, but you got to learn. A little caution never hurt anyone. A good woodsman has only one scar on him. No more, no less.”

— Haruki Murakami

202. “Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.”

— Haruki Murakami

203. “Life’s no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe’s my own to fool with.”

— Haruki Murakami

204. “The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring – and all of the acts carried out – on this earth. But the moon remained silent; it told no stories.”

— Haruki Murakami

205. “You’ve already decided what you’re going to do, and all that’s left is to set the wheels in motion. I mean, it’s your life. Basically, you gotta go with what you think is right.”

— Haruki Murakami

206. “I wonder what ants do on rainy days?”

— Haruki Murakami

207. “There is some risk, of course. But risk is the spice of life.”

— Haruki Murakami

208. “At least he never walked.”

— Haruki Murakami

209. “When you are used to the kind of life -of never getting anything you want- you stop knowing what it is you want.”

— Haruki Murakami

210. “When the fire goes out, you’ll start feeling the cold. You’ll wake up whether you want to or not.”

— Haruki Murakami

211. “What we needed were not words and promises but a steady accumulation of small realities.”

— Haruki Murakami

212. “Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.”

— Haruki Murakami

213. “Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work.”

— Haruki Murakami

214. “The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day.”

— Haruki Murakami

215. “No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning.”

— Haruki Murakami

216. “It’s pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy Pride.”

— Haruki Murakami

217. “An unhealthy soul requires a healthy body.”

— Haruki Murakami

218. “I’m just kinda tired. Like a monkey in the rain.”

— Haruki Murakami

219. “Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all.”

— Haruki Murakami

220. “Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That’s the way we live our lives.”

— Haruki Murakami

221. “My point is: in this whole wide world the only person you can depend on is you.”

— Haruki Murakami

222. “I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.”

— Haruki Murakami

223. “Two-thirds of earth’s surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface.”

— Haruki Murakami

224. “Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I’m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

— Haruki Murakami

225. “We all have ordeals we must face,” Menshiki said. “It’s through them that we find a new direction in our lives. The more grueling the ordeal, the more it can help us down the road.”

— Haruki Murakami

226. “Our responsibility begins with our imagination.”

— Haruki Murakami

227. “Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads – at least that’s where I imagine it – there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.”

— Haruki Murakami

228. “Everything, everything seemed once-upon-a-time.”

— Haruki Murakami

229. “I write my novels personally, desperately and non-negligently. When I write my novels, I think about my novels only, and never do other works.”

— Haruki Murakami

230. “Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day.”

— Haruki Murakami

231. “How much do you love me?? Midori asked. ‘Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter,’ I said.”

— Haruki Murakami

232. “Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it’s time to drink.”

— Haruki Murakami

233. “Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow.”

— Haruki Murakami

234. “Waiting for your answer is one of the most painful things I have ever been through. At least let me know whether or not I hurt you.”

— Haruki Murakami

235. “Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.”

— Haruki Murakami

236. “Life is like a box of cookies.”

— Haruki Murakami

237. “Until the bitter end, the emptiness inside her was hers alone.”

— Haruki Murakami

238. “The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”

— Haruki Murakami

239. “Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt.”

— Haruki Murakami

240. “No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.”

— Haruki Murakami

241. “Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of it. By living our lives, we nurture death.”

— Haruki Murakami

242. “I happen to like the strange ones. People who look normal and leads normal lives – they’re the ones you have to watch out for.”

— Haruki Murakami

243. “What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real.”

— Haruki Murakami

244. “I’m often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I’m running? I don’t have a clue.”

— Haruki Murakami

245. “While they’re still alive, people can become ghosts.”

— Haruki Murakami

246. “No, I don’t want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don’t like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I can.”

— Haruki Murakami

247. “Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore.”

— Haruki Murakami

248. “I was feeling lonely without her, but the fact that I could feel lonely at all was consolation. Loneliness wasn’t such a bad feeling. It was like the stillness of the pin oak after the little birds had flown off.”

— Haruki Murakami

249. “I’ll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel.”

— Haruki Murakami

250. “It’s a dark, cool, quiet place. A basement in your soul. And that place can sometimes be dangerous to the human mind. I can open the door and enter that darkness, but I have to be very careful. I can find my story there. Then I bring that thing to the surface, into the real world.”

— Haruki Murakami