Top 160 Sayaka Murata Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “After all, I absorb the world around me, and that’s changing all the time.”

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

53. “Once we donned our uniforms, we were all equals regardless of gender, age, or nationality – all simply store workers.”

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

56. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

58. “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

59. “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

60. “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

61. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

64. “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

65. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

68. “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

69. “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

70. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

72. “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

73. “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

74. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

77. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

79. “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

80. “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

81. “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

82. “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

83. “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

84. “Love is a drug made in the brain to enable humans to mate. It’s simply an anesthetic. In other words, it’s an illusion made to prettify the painful mating act, to reduce the suffering and disgust of the sexual act. We might be able to use this anesthetic if we’re ever in pain. But for now I don’t think it’s necessary.”

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

— Sayaka Murata

87. “I guess anyone who devotes their life to fighting society in order to.”

— Sayaka Murata

88. “I found society as annoying as he did, but there wasn’t anything about myself that I particularly wanted to defend, so I couldn’t understand why Shiraha was taking it out on me like this. Well, I dare say life is tough for him, I thought, sipping at my warm water.”

— Sayaka Murata

89. “Cousin Yuu was my boyfriend.”

— Sayaka Murata

90. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

92. “These past two weeks I’d been asked fourteen times why I wasn’t married. And twelve times why I was still working part-time. So for now I’d decide what to eliminate from my life according to what I was asked about most often I thought.”

— Sayaka Murata

93. “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

94. “Family” is hard work I thought.”

— Sayaka Murata

95. “Both Mom and my sister kept going on and on about how wonderful motherhood was, as if it were some kind of religion. I was still hoping to be brainwashed. But repeating ‘motherhood is wonderful’ over and over like a Buddhist chant was hardly going to be enough to brainwash me on its own. It just made me uncomfortable.”

— Sayaka Murata

96. “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

97. “It was the first time anyone had ever taught me how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech.”

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

99. “Now, too, I felt reassured by the expression on Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara’s faces: Good, I pulled off being a “person.”

— Sayaka Murata

100. “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