Top 160 Sayaka Murata Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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

102. “Cousin Yuu was my boyfriend.”

— Sayaka Murata

103. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

105. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

107. “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

108. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

112. “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

113. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

115. “I’d noticed soon after starting the job that whenever I got angry at the same things as everyone else, they all seemed happy.”

— Sayaka Murata

116. “When I think that my body is entirely made up of food from this store, I feel like I’m as much a part of the store as the magazine racks or the coffee machine.”

— Sayaka Murata

117. “You know very well know how much I hate people who insists on their rights while neglecting their duties.”

— Sayaka Murata

118. “I’d never meant to make them sad or have to keep apologizing for things I did, so I decided to keep my mouth shut as best I could outside home. I would no longer do anything of my own accord, and would either just mimic what everyone else was doing, or simply follow instructions.”

— Sayaka Murata

119. “Our fall vacation was to be one month. That was our limit. If we stayed any longer, our savings would run out, and people from the Factory wouldn’t keep quiet either.”

— Sayaka Murata

120. “That’s the image of you that pleases them the most.”

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

122. “Society was a system for falling in love. People who couldn’t fall in love had to fake it. What came first: the system or love?”

— Sayaka Murata

123. “I wasn’t the sort to have many friends, and whenever she texted me I found it annoying but was also kind of relieved. Without her to ground me, I thought, I and my husband could easily be left behind together by society.”

— Sayaka Murata

124. “Even though the physical body was the same, the type of alcohol had a different effect depending on the character.”

— Sayaka Murata

125. “It felt strangely soft, like stroking a blister.”

— Sayaka Murata

126. “Do it a lot and make a family, then once the relationship has cooled, you play around outside the marriage. That’s the way it is for lots of couples, isn’t it? Playing around is a man’s reward. Your father has had his fair share, haven’t you dear? But really, not even doing it at all from the start, that’s not what marriage is about, is it now?”

— Sayaka Murata

127. “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

128. “The number one reason I love you is that you make me human.”

— Sayaka Murata

129. “I simply spoke in a way that I would be liked within whichever community I happened to be in. I responded to wherever I was in order to adapt to it. I was just like a robot.”

— Sayaka Murata

130. “She’d grown up, but even now she still believed strongly in society. She had always been exemplary in learning to be a woman, truly a straight-A student. It looked excruciatingly tiring.”

— Sayaka Murata

131. “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

132. “Oh yes, it’s true, you’ve got a chronic condition, haven’t you? It must be really tough on you.” “You’ve been like that for ages now. Are you okay?”

— Sayaka Murata

133. “We judged what we saw not in terms of knowledge or culture but in terms of whether or not it was rational.”

— Sayaka Murata

134. “It’s not a matter whether they permit it or not. It’s what I am.”

— Sayaka Murata

135. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

137. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

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

— Sayaka Murata

140. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

142. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

144. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

146. “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

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

— Sayaka Murata

148. “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

149. “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

150. “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