Top 160 Sayaka Murata Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “It’s not a matter whether they permit it or not. It’s what I am.”

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

103. “Being treated crudely as a tool for society was clearer than all that talk of falling in love, and actually I wasn’t upset by it at all.”

— Sayaka Murata

104. “As far as I was concerned, though, keeping my mouth shut was the most sensible approach to getting by in life.”

— Sayaka Murata

105. “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

106. “From the tone of her voice, it was clear that my sister was not speaking for herself but on behalf of society. I envied her ability to do that.”

— Sayaka Murata

107. “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

108. “She had always been exemplary in learning to be a woman, truly a straight-A student. It looked excruciatingly tiring.”

— Sayaka Murata

109. “Had I changed a lot since then? Yuu was the same age as me. What would he think?”

— Sayaka Murata

110. “Em va semblar que qualsevol canvi, tant si era positiu com si no, seria millor que quedar-me tal com estava en aquell moment.”

— Sayaka Murata

111. “They looked so bizarre I thought they must all be out of their minds.”

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

114. “What I’m really scared of is believing that the words society makes me speak are my own. You’re different. That’s how I know you’re from another planet.”

— Sayaka Murata

115. “They can’t let go of the knowledge they’ve accumulated, even though it’s nothing more than data.”

— Sayaka Murata

116. “That’s why contemporary society is dysfunctional. They might mumble nice things about diversity of lifestyles and whatnot, but in the end nothing has changed since prehistoric times.”

— Sayaka Murata

117. “Good, I pulled off being a “person.”

— Sayaka Murata

118. “All the adults had jumped to the unfounded conclusion that I must be an abused child and blamed my family. That way they could understand why I’d done such a terrible thing and therefore have a peace of mind.”

— Sayaka Murata

119. “Because those are the rules of the Factory. We’re slaves to our genes.”

— Sayaka Murata

120. “I had never been given any affirmation at home, so I was hungry for praise. When I was complimented, even on a whim by a hysterical teacher, my chest grew hot, and for some reason I felt like crying.”

— Sayaka Murata

121. “Well, how are you?” my mother went on. “You spend all day on your feet, Keiko. It must be tiring. Um, how have things been lately? What’s new?” Hearing her pry like this, I got the feeling that somehow she was still hoping for some kind of new development in my life. She was probably a bit tired of how I hadn’t progressed at all in eighteen years. When I told her everything was fine as usual, she sounded both relieved and disappointed at once.”

— Sayaka Murata

122. “I had the feeling I was being told they wanted to settle the matter this way because that was the easiest option for them.”

— Sayaka Murata

123. “Walking like this, feeling like a feral human, even machines and buildings were warm to the touch, and some emitted sounds and vibrations. Their presence was similar to the sounds emitted by life-forms in the forest.”

— Sayaka Murata

124. “Anyone who didn’t manufacture new life – or wasn’t obviously trying to – came under gentle pressure. Couples that hadn’t manufactured new life had to demonstrate their contribution to the Factory through their work. My husband and I were living quietly in a corner of the Factory, keeping our heads down.”

— Sayaka Murata

125. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

127. “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

128. “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

129. “Sometimes I even find myself operating the checkout till in my dreams.”

— Sayaka Murata

130. “It must be nutritious, but I don’t see any data about humans using sperm in cooking.”

— Sayaka Murata

131. “Family” is hard work I thought.”

— Sayaka Murata

132. “Assim, sempre pensando o que precisava me curar, fui me tornando adulta.”

— Sayaka Murata

133. “Nonhuman lives jostled up against the window. The presence of nonhuman creatures was stronger at night. Strangely enough, though I was a little scared, I felt as though my own feral cells were throbbing.”

— Sayaka Murata

134. “He was still my husband, but more than that he was a Popinpobopian. This was something I could trust more than marriage.”

— Sayaka Murata

135. “And so, believing that I had to be cured, I grew into adulthood.”

— Sayaka Murata

136. “It’s handy having a dumpster in the house. In this house, that’s my role. When Dad and Mom and Kise get so fed up they can’t bear it any longer, they dump everything onto me.”

— Sayaka Murata

137. “My body was not my own. I had always been secretly shrinking the role I had been assigned as a tool of society.”

— Sayaka Murata

138. “The phrase “close-knit family,” which I’d come across in a school library book and had stuck in my mind, always came back to me whenever I saw my parents and sister together. If I wasn’t here, the three of them would make a perfect unit. So I wanted them to spend time together as a close-knit family without me now and then.”

— Sayaka Murata

139. “From where I stood, there were two types of prejudiced people – those who had a deep-rooted urge for prejudice and those who unthinkingly repeated a barrage of slurs they’d heard somewhere. Shiraha appeared to be the latter.”

— Sayaka Murata

140. “The person who had given birth to me said I was a dead loss, so I decided it really must be true.”

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

142. “Sobreviver, haja o que houver.”

— Sayaka Murata

143. “The seaside is great. Humans have lived by the ocean since ancient times, so our DNA responds to it fondly. That’s what he’d said at the time.”

— Sayaka Murata

144. “Our nakedness around the house was innocent, as if we had returned to the time before Adam and Eve ate the apple.”

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

146. “It’s really hard to put into words things that are just a little bit not okay. I had the feeling that Mr. Igasaki was a little bit not okay.”

— Sayaka Murata

147. “If they tried it, the memories of the wild rooted in their flesh would come back to them, and they would discover that eating the city like this would connect the earth between the gaps in the concrete and their own body.”

— Sayaka Murata

148. “I’ve been given my freedom, but I’m not any good at being free.”

— Sayaka Murata

149. “I want you to hide me from everyone who knows me. I haven’t caused any trouble for anyone, but they all think nothing of poking their noses into my life. I just want to exist, quietly breathing.”

— Sayaka Murata

150. “I mean, if finding a job is so hard, then at least you should get married.”

— Sayaka Murata