Top 500 Haruki Murakami Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself. This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of marathon running.”

— Haruki Murakami

352. “From a distance, most things look beautiful.”

— Haruki Murakami

353. “I tell lies sometimes. The last time I lied was a year ago. I absolutely detest lying. You could say that lying and silence are the two greatest sins of present day society. Actually, I lie a lot, and I’m always clamming up.”

— Haruki Murakami

354. “Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night.”

— Haruki Murakami

355. “Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.”

— Haruki Murakami

356. “I used to think the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time. But it’s not like that. It happens overnight.”

— Haruki Murakami

357. “I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightning. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me.”

— Haruki Murakami

358. “Nature grants its beauty to us all, drawing no line between rich and poor.”

— Haruki Murakami

359. “But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”

— Haruki Murakami

360. “Cats know everything. Not like dogs.”

— Haruki Murakami

361. “Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn’t keep on living like this.”

— Haruki Murakami

362. “You keep looking at the sea and you start to miss being with people; you stay around people all the time and you just want to go look at the sea.”

— Haruki Murakami

363. “You have to make an effort to always look at the good side, always think about the good things. Then you’ve got nothing to be afraid of. If something bad comes up, you do more thinking at that point.”

— Haruki Murakami

364. “It is a lonely life sometimes, like throwing a stone into the deep darkness. It might hit something, but you can’t see it. The only thing you can do is to guess, and to believe.”

— Haruki Murakami

365. “I never could stand being forced to do something I didn’t want to do at a time I didn’t want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I’d give it everything I had.”

— Haruki Murakami

366. “The silence grew deeper, so deep that if you listened carefully you might very well catch the sound of the earth revolving on its axis.”

— Haruki Murakami

367. “Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light.”

— Haruki Murakami

368. “I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I’m wrong, but I won’t change.”

— Haruki Murakami

369. “One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds.”

— Haruki Murakami

370. “I’ll never forget you,” I said. “I could never forget you.”

— Haruki Murakami

371. “I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.”

— Haruki Murakami

372. “When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You’re seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you’re worth.”

— Haruki Murakami

373. “What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me.”

— Haruki Murakami

374. “Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren’t you just in another, larger one?”

— Haruki Murakami

375. “A person’s last moments are an important thing. You can’t choose how you’re born but you can choose how you die.”

— Haruki Murakami

376. “They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It’s a miracle, a cosmic miracle.”

— Haruki Murakami

377. “Things outside you are projections of what’s inside you, and what’s inside you is a projection of what’s outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you’re stepping into the labyrinth inside.”

— Haruki Murakami

378. “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

379. “The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.”

— Haruki Murakami

380. “Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.”

— Haruki Murakami

381. “But if something did happen, it happened. Whether it’s right or wrong. I accept everything that happens, and that’s how I became the person I am now.”

— Haruki Murakami

382. “Age certainly hadn’t conferred any smarts on me. Character maybe, but mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russian writers have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up.”

— Haruki Murakami

383. “Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern.”

— Haruki Murakami

384. “It’s because of you when I’m in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live another good day.”

— Haruki Murakami

385. “The journey I’m taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I’m seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart.”

— Haruki Murakami

386. “Everyone may be ordinary, but they’re not normal.”

— Haruki Murakami

387. “You lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world that’s inside you.”

— Haruki Murakami

388. “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

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

— Haruki Murakami

390. “Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock ‘n’ roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.”

— Haruki Murakami

391. “El destino se lleva siempre su parte y no se retira hasta obtener lo que le corresponde.”

— Haruki Murakami

392. “That’s what love’s all about. You’re the only one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.”

— Haruki Murakami

393. “Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.”

— Haruki Murakami

394. “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

395. “Colours shone with exceptional clarity in the rain. The ground was a deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, the people wrapped in yellow looking like special spirits that were allowed to wander over the earth on rainy mornings only.”

— Haruki Murakami

396. “I never trust people with no appetite. It’s like they’re always holding something back on you.”

— Haruki Murakami

397. “Liest man, was alle anderen auch lesen, kann man auch nur das denken, was alle anderen denken.”

— Haruki Murakami

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

— Haruki Murakami

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

— Haruki Murakami

400. “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