Top 160 Sayaka Murata Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Once we donned our uniforms, we were all equals regardless of gender, age, or nationality – all simply store workers.”

— Sayaka Murata

52. “Seeing how excited she was, it occurred to me that it wasn’t such a stretch to say that contemporary society was still stuck in the Stone Age after all. So the manual for life already existed. It was just that it was already ingrained in everyone’s heads, and there wasn’t any need to put it in writing.”

— Sayaka Murata

53. “After all, I absorb the world around me, and that’s changing all the time.”

— Sayaka Murata

54. “I couldn’t even imagine what a perfectly functioning society would be like. I was beginning to lose track of what ‘society’ actually was. I even had a feeling it was all an illusion.”

— Sayaka Murata

55. “As far as I was concerned, there wasn’t any difference between my friend Miho’s child and my nephew, and I didn’t understand the logic of coming out all the way here just to see him. Maybe this particular baby should be more important to me than the others. But so far as I could see, aside from a few minor differences they were all just an animal called a baby and looked much the same, just like stray cats all looked much the same.”

— Sayaka Murata

56. “When I open the door, the brightly lit box awaits me – a dependable, normal world that keeps turning. I have faith in the world inside the light-filled box.”

— Sayaka Murata

57. “I looked into Shiraha’s eyes. There I saw only prejudice in its simplest form.”

— Sayaka Murata

58. “In a short-staffed convenience store, a store worker can sometimes be highly appreciated just by existing, by virtue of not rocking the boat. I’m not particularly brilliant compared to Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara, but I’m second to none in terms of never being late or taking days off. I just come in every day without fail, and because of that I’m accepted as a well-functioning part of the store.”

— Sayaka Murata

59. “We prepared three Man dishes: Miso Soup with Man, Daikon Leaf and Man Stir-Fry, and Man Simmered in Sweetened Soy Sauce.”

— Sayaka Murata

60. “Sekalipun tidak punya teman di sekolah, tidak berarti aku menjadi sasaran perundungan.”

— Sayaka Murata

61. “How long do we have to just survive? When will we be able to live rather than just focus on surviving?”

— Sayaka Murata

62. “It’s really hard to put into words things that are just a little bit not okay.”

— Sayaka Murata

63. “My present self is formed almost completely of the people around me.”

— Sayaka Murata

64. “What a pain I thought, wondering why everyone felt such a need for reassurance.”

— Sayaka Murata

65. “The sooner I was brainwashed the better. That way I would no longer suffer.”

— Sayaka Murata

66. “Mungkin orang yang merasa hidupnya dilanggar oleh orang lain akan merasa sedikit lebih baik dengan menyerang orang lain menggunakan cara yang sama.”

— Sayaka Murata

67. “I just want to exist, quietly breathing.”

— Sayaka Murata

68. “When you do physical labor, you end up being no longer useful when your physical condition deteriorates. However hard I work, however dependable I am, when my body grows old then no doubt I too will be a worn-out part, ready to be replaced, no longer of any use to the convenience store.”

— Sayaka Murata

69. “People can easily pass judgment on others when they’re protected by their own normality.”

— Sayaka Murata

70. “Just as all the water that was in my body last time we met has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up me have changed too.”

— Sayaka Murata

71. “I mean, normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.”

— Sayaka Murata

72. “My present self is formed almost completely of the people around me. I am currently made up of 30 percent Mrs. Izumi, 30 percent Sugawara, 20 percent the manager, and the rest absorbed from past colleagues such as Sasaki, who left six months ago, and Okasaki, who was our supervisor until a year ago.”

— Sayaka Murata

73. “Getting fired from a casual job in a convenience store at his age! Hopeless, really. He’d be doing us all a favor if he dropped dead, seriously.” Everyone laughed. “He really would,” I said nodding, thinking that if I ever became a foreign object, I’d no doubt be eliminated in much the same way.”

— Sayaka Murata

74. “It appears that if a man and a woman are alone in an apartment together, people’s imaginations run wild and they’re satisfied regardless of the reality.”

— Sayaka Murata

75. “Everyone was crying for the poor dead bird as they went around murdering flowers, plucking their stalks, exclaiming, “What lovely flowers! Little Mr. Budgie will definitely be pleased.” They looked so bizarre I thought they must all be out of their minds.”

— Sayaka Murata

76. “It took all my effort just to remain at my zero level without becoming a minus.”

— Sayaka Murata

77. “You gave me the flow of time, with morning, afternoon, and night, and the gift of miraculous shoes to walk around the real world. For me you were a magician. Without you, I would probably have lived my life without ever being aware that a period of time called morning even existed.”

— Sayaka Murata

78. “My town was a collection of nests, a factory for manufacturing babies. I was a tool for the town’s good, in two senses. Firstly, I had to study hard to become a work tool. Secondly, I had to be a good girl, so that I could become a reproductive organ for the town.”

— Sayaka Murata

79. “What I’m really scared of is believing the words society makes me speak are my own.”

— Sayaka Murata

80. “Even as an adult, my sister entrusted the keys of her life to other people. Didnt that scare her? How could she be so cheerful?”

— Sayaka Murata

81. “The grown-ups, who did what society wanted of them, were shaken by those of us who did not.”

— Sayaka Murata

82. “I couldn’t stop hearing the store telling me the way it wanted to be, what it needed. It was all flowing into me. It wasn’t me speaking. It was the store. I was just channeling its revelations from on high.”

— Sayaka Murata

83. “My ears and eyes are important sensors to catch their every move and desire.”

— Sayaka Murata

84. “Minimarket bukan hanya tempat bagi pelanggan untuk membeli barang-barang yang mereka perlukan, melainkan juga harus menjadi tempat yang memberikan kesenangan dan kebahagiaan ketika pelanggan menemukan barang yang disuka. Aku berjalan mengelilingi minimarket dengan cepat sambil mengangguk-angguk.”

— Sayaka Murata

85. “Look, anyone who doesn’t fit in with the village loses any right to privacy. They’ll trample all over you as they please. You either get married and have kids or go hunting and earn money, and anyone who doesn’t contribute to the village in one of these forms is a heretic. And the villagers will come poking their noses into your life as much as they want.”

— Sayaka Murata

86. “So, will I be cured if I leave the convenience store? Or am I better staying working there? And should I kick Shiraha out? Or am I better with him here? Look, I’ll do whatever you say. I don’t mind either way, so please just instruct me in specific terms.”

— Sayaka Murata

87. “A convenience store is a world of sound.”

— Sayaka Murata

88. “Everyone believed in the Factory. Everyone was brainwashed by the Factory and did as they were told. They all used their reproductive organs for the Factory and did their jobs for the sake of the Factory. My husband and I were people they’d failed to brainwash, and anyone who remained unbrainwashed had to keep up an act in order to avoid being eliminated by the Factory.”

— Sayaka Murata

89. “If it had been that simple all along, I thought, I wish she’d given me clear instructions before, then I wouldn’t have had to go to such lengths to find out how to be normal.”

— Sayaka Murata

90. “Cousin Yuu was my boyfriend.”

— Sayaka Murata

91. “It was a hideous cacophony – as though everyone had been playing the same score, but had suddenly pulled out random instruments and begun playing them instead.”

— Sayaka Murata

92. “Yuu, have you ever thought that your life doesn’t belong to you?”

— Sayaka Murata

93. “I stuffed the food before me into my body so that I would be fit to work again tomorrow.”

— Sayaka Murata

94. “The door opened quietly, and a tall man, almost six feet and lanky like a wire coat hanger, came in, his head drooping.”

— Sayaka Murata

95. “Listening to my friends go on about me and Shiraha was like hearing them talk about a couple of total strangers. They seemed to have the story wrapped up between them. It was about characters who had the same names as we did, but who had absolutely nothing to do with me or Shiraha.”

— Sayaka Murata

96. “For the first time, I could think of the me in the window as a being with meaning.”

— Sayaka Murata

97. “And I probably infect others with the way I speak too. Infecting each other like this is how we maintain ourselves as human is what I think.”

— Sayaka Murata

98. “Everyone here is a stupid loser. It’s the same in any convenience store. You’ll only find housewives who can’t get by on their husbands’ salary, job-hoppers without plans for the future, and the crappiest students who can’t get better jobs like being a home tutor. Or foreigners who send money home. All losers.”

— Sayaka Murata

99. “Don’t make it sound so easy! We men have it much harder than women, you know. If you’re not yet a fully fledged member of society, then it’s get a job, and if you’ve got a job, it’s earn more money, and if you earn more money, it’s get married and have offspring. Society is continually judging us. Don’t lump me together with women. You lot have a cushy time of it,” he said sullenly.”

— Sayaka Murata

100. “He seemed to have this odd circuitry in his mind that allowed him to see himself only as the victim and never the perpetrator I thought as I watched him.”

— Sayaka Murata