Top 500 Haruki Murakami Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 9 of 10

401. “What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.”

— Haruki Murakami

402. “Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.”

— Haruki Murakami

Featured in: Real Quotes

403. “It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

— Haruki Murakami

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

404. “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

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

— Haruki Murakami

406. “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

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

— Haruki Murakami

408. “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

409. “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

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

— Haruki Murakami

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

— Haruki Murakami

412. “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

413. “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

414. “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

415. “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

416. “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

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

— Haruki Murakami

418. “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

419. “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

420. “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

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

421. “If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn’t like to be half of what I should be.”

— Haruki Murakami

422. “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

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

— Haruki Murakami

424. “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

425. “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

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

— Haruki Murakami

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

— Haruki Murakami

428. “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

429. “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

430. “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

431. “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

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

— Haruki Murakami

433. “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

434. “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

435. “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

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

— Haruki Murakami

437. “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

438. “In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.”

— Haruki Murakami

439. “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

440. “And when you come back to Japan next summer, let’s have that date or whatever you want to call it. We can go to the zoo or the botanical garden or the aquarium, and then we’ll have the most politically correct and scrumptious omelets we can find.”

— Haruki Murakami

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

— Haruki Murakami

442. “Do you know what limbo is? It’s the neutral point between life and death. A kind of sad, gloomy place. Where I am now, in other words – this forest.”

— Haruki Murakami

443. “I contented myself with whiskey, for medicinal purposes. It helped numb my various aches and pains. Not that the alcohol actually reduced the pain; it just gave the pain a life of its own, apart from mine.”

— Haruki Murakami

444. “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

445. “Never trust a man who carries a handkerchief, I always say. One of many prejudicial rules of thumb.”

— Haruki Murakami

446. “There’s a special feeling you get on a veranda that you just can’t get anywhere else.”

— Haruki Murakami

447. “It was a small room with dim light coming in the window, reminiscent of old Polish films.”

— Haruki Murakami

448. “When there’s nothing to do, you do nothing slowly and intently.”

— Haruki Murakami

449. “I am so tired. I feel myself drifting, away, a little by little. I am overcome by the sensation that I am crumbling, parts of my being drifting away.”

— Haruki Murakami

450. “Somewhere in his body – perhaps in the marrow of his bones – he would continue to feel her absence.”

— Haruki Murakami