Top 500 Haruki Murakami Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “In other words, let’s face it: Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that’s unfair, I think it’s possible to seek out a kind of fairness. Of course, that might take time and effort. And maybe it won’t seem to be worth all that. It’s up to each individual to decide whether or not it is.”

— Haruki Murakami

302. “They were each like a mirror for the other, reflecting the changes in themselves.”

— Haruki Murakami

303. “I often dream about the Dolphin Hotel.”

— Haruki Murakami

304. “And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That’s the city.”

— Haruki Murakami

305. “Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion.”

— Haruki Murakami

306. “Isn’t life strange? There are people who have so many leftover clothes they can’t stuff them all in their wardrobe. And then there are people like me, whose socks never match.”

— Haruki Murakami

307. “Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum – a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I’m watching over it for no one but myself.”

— Haruki Murakami

308. “I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.”

— Haruki Murakami

309. “Civilization is communication,” the doctor said. “That which is not expressed doesn’t exist.”

— Haruki Murakami

310. “Crying is personal. On the other hand, laughing is more general. Laughing makes our hearts wider.”

— Haruki Murakami

311. “But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.”

— Haruki Murakami

312. “Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.”

— Haruki Murakami

313. “We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze.”

— Haruki Murakami

314. “Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.”

— Haruki Murakami

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

315. “Stories lie deep in our souls. Stories lie so deep at the bottom of our hearts that they can bring people together on the deepest level. When I write a novel, I go into such depths.”

— Haruki Murakami

316. “Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice.”

— Haruki Murakami

317. “Genius or fool, you don’t live in the world alone. You can hide underground or you can build a wall around yourself, but somebody’s going to come along and screw up the works.”

— Haruki Murakami

318. “The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith justice, evil – they’re all fluid and in transition. They don’t stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.”

— Haruki Murakami

319. “This is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope.”

— Haruki Murakami

320. “Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used.”

— Haruki Murakami

321. “What’s nurtured slowly grows well.”

— Haruki Murakami

322. “This person, this self, this me, finally, was made somewhere else. Everything had come from somewhere else, and it would all go somewhere else. I was nothing but a pathway for the person known as me.”

— Haruki Murakami

323. “Maybe she thought the garbage and rocks in your head were interesting. But finally, garbage is garbage and rocks are rocks.”

— Haruki Murakami

324. “In dreams you don’t need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don’t exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don’t hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality.”

— Haruki Murakami

325. “Things will go where they’re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt. Life is like that.”

— Haruki Murakami

326. “When it’s all over, it’ll seem like a dream.”

— Haruki Murakami

327. “He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.”

— Haruki Murakami

328. “People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues.”

— Haruki Murakami

329. “A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance.”

— Haruki Murakami

330. “Things change everyday. With each new dawn, it is not the same world as before. And you’re not the same person you were either.”

— Haruki Murakami

331. “Mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances.”

— Haruki Murakami

332. “Lay down your mind and peace will come. A peace deeper than anything you have known.”

— Haruki Murakami

333. “It’s all matter of attitude. You could let a lot of things bother you if you wanted to But it’s pretty much the same anywhere you go, you can manage.”

— Haruki Murakami

334. “If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

— Haruki Murakami

335. “Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come from differences in their reproductive system.”

— Haruki Murakami

336. “If they invent a car that runs on stupid jokes, you could go far.”

— Haruki Murakami

337. “In most cases learning something essential in life requires physical pain.”

— Haruki Murakami

338. “That’s gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way.”

— Haruki Murakami

339. “Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge.”

— Haruki Murakami

340. “Pain is invisible, and known only to the sufferer.”

— Haruki Murakami

341. “So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Watanabe: Wow, and did your search pay off? M: That’s the hard part. I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfection. That makes it tough.”

— Haruki Murakami

342. “If you never noticed, it never happened.”

— Haruki Murakami

343. “That’s how stories happen – with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

— Haruki Murakami

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

344. “Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.”

— Haruki Murakami

345. “Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die.”

— Haruki Murakami

346. “There’s an essential order you have to follow in everything. It’s a way of showing respect, following everything in the correct order.”

— Haruki Murakami

347. “Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in. So much so, we can’t even tell whether our experiences belong to time or to the world of physical things.”

— Haruki Murakami

348. “Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves.”

— Haruki Murakami

349. “I’m not very good at putting my feelings into words. That’s why people misunderstand me.”

— Haruki Murakami

350. “A deserted library in the morning – there’s something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully.”

— Haruki Murakami