Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there. — Haruki Murakami

Everything in life is a metaphor. — Haruki Murakami

You can see a person’s whole life in the cancer they get. — Haruki Murakami

Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life. — Haruki Murakami

Another person’s life is that person’s life. You can’t take responsibility. — Haruki Murakami

Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life. — Haruki Murakami

In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be. — Haruki Murakami

No one could say how long that life would last. Whatever has form can disappear in an instant. — Haruki Murakami

Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language. — Haruki Murakami

Life is like a box of cookies. — Haruki Murakami

Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most. — Haruki Murakami

In his own way, he’s lived life with all the intensity he could muster. — Haruki Murakami

Life might just be an absurd, even crude, chain of events and nothing more. — Haruki Murakami

Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That’s the way we live our lives. — Haruki Murakami

In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion. — Haruki Murakami

Life is not like water. Things in life don’t necessarily flow over the shortest possible route. — Haruki Murakami

Everything, everything seemed once–upon–a–time. — Haruki Murakami

I’m kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I’m always hot. — Haruki Murakami

Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy. — Haruki Murakami

Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge. — Haruki Murakami

Time flows in a strange way on Sundays. — Haruki Murakami

The world is full of ways and means to waste time. — Haruki Murakami

Nobody’s going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can’t always be in the fast lane. — Haruki Murakami

This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: ‘At the time, no one knew what was coming. — Haruki Murakami

If you want everything to be nice and straight all the time, then go live in a world made with a triungular ruler. — Haruki Murakami

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt. — Haruki Murakami

I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. And killing time is one of my specialities. — Haruki Murakami

A friend to kill time is a friend sublime. — Haruki Murakami

I’m me, and at the same time not me. That’s what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling. — Haruki Murakami

His heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small restless body. — Haruki Murakami

Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it’s time to drink. — Haruki Murakami

Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart. — Haruki Murakami

The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night. — Haruki Murakami

In the spring of her twenty–second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. — Haruki Murakami

The heart apparently doesn’t stop that easily. — Haruki Murakami

Kids’ hearts are malleable, but once they gel it’s hard to get them back the way they were. — Haruki Murakami

There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person’s heart. — Haruki Murakami

What happens when people open their hearts?’ ‘They get better. — Haruki Murakami

Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come. — Haruki Murakami

Everytime you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart. — Haruki Murakami

I’m a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw. — Haruki Murakami

The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts. — Haruki Murakami

Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever. — Haruki Murakami

One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds — Haruki Murakami

Letters are just pieces of paper,’ I said. ‘Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish. — Haruki Murakami

It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart. — Haruki Murakami

Tengo could hardly believe it––that in this frantic, labyrinth–like world, two people’s hearts––a boy’s and a girl’s––could be connected, unchanged, even though they hadn’t seen each other for twenty years. — Haruki Murakami

You said you’re going far away,’ Tamaru said. ‘How far away are we talking about?’ ‘It’s a distance that can’t be measured.’ ‘Like the distance that separates one person’s heart from another’s. — Haruki Murakami

But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else. — Haruki Murakami

Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only arseholes do that. — Haruki Murakami

I have to wrIte thIngs down to feel I fully comprehend them. — Haruki Murakami

People leave traces of themselves where they feel most comfortable, most worthwhile. — Haruki Murakami

I don’t know a whole lot about symbolism. There seems to me to be a potential danger in symbolism. I feel more comfortable with metaphors and similes. — Haruki Murakami

I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something. — Haruki Murakami

It just happens to be the way that I’m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them. — Haruki Murakami

I’m not human. I’m a piece of machinery. I don’t need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead. — Haruki Murakami

Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum––a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I’m watching over it for no one but myself. — Haruki Murakami

When it’s raining like this,’ said Naoko, ‘it feels as if we’re the only ones in the world. I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us could stay together. — Haruki Murakami

Each person feels pain in his own way, each has his own scars. — Haruki Murakami

I probably still haven’t completely adapted to the world. I don’t know, I feel like this isn’t the real world. The people, the scene: they just don’t seem real to me. — Haruki Murakami

Whether it’s good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what’s most important is what you can’t see but can feel in your heart. — Haruki Murakami

Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore. — Haruki Murakami

It feels good to think about you when I’m warm in bed. I feel as if you’re curled up there beside me, fast asleep. And I think how great it would be if it were true. — Haruki Murakami

Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do–and it feels pretty good. — Haruki Murakami

Sometimes I feel as if I’m racing with my own shadow, Korogi says. But that’s one thing I’ll never be able to outrun. Nobody can shake off their own shadow. — Haruki Murakami

I didn’t feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing. — Haruki Murakami

Love and used Subarus were two different things. Weren’t they? — Haruki Murakami

Love can rebuild the world, they say, so everything’s possible when it comes to love. — Haruki Murakami

For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly. From something like that or it doesn’t begin at all. — Haruki Murakami

Love with complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind. — Haruki Murakami

Sometimes I think I’ve got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody. — Haruki Murakami

People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can’t predict it. That’s love. — Haruki Murakami

I love pop culture––the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That’s why I said I don’t like elitism. — Haruki Murakami

How much do you love me?’ Midori asked. ‘Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter,’ I said. — Haruki Murakami

If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person. — Haruki Murakami

I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it––to be fed so much love I couldn’t take any more. Just once. — Haruki Murakami

When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. — Haruki Murakami

When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That’s what I think. It’s just a form of sincerity. — Haruki Murakami

Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half–truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but loose you. — Haruki Murakami

The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living. — Haruki Murakami

We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy. — Haruki Murakami

Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of it. By living our lives, we nurture death. — Haruki Murakami

I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for. — Haruki Murakami

Where I’m living is not a storybook world. It’s the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes. — Haruki Murakami

We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect. — Haruki Murakami

I had my jazz club and I had enough money. So I didn’t have to write for my living. — Haruki Murakami

She was hearing everything that went on in his heart, like a person who can trace a map with his fingertip and conjure up vivid, living scenery. — Haruki Murakami

I’d made it back to the land of the living. No matter how boring or mediocre a world it might be, this was it. — Haruki Murakami

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

But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair. — Haruki Murakami

There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair. — Haruki Murakami

Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They’ve got plenty of life to lead inside their own context. — Haruki Murakami

I never made any plan before writing, however I succeeded. I enjoyed writing with excitement ,’what happen on the next page? — Haruki Murakami

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say. — Haruki Murakami

I never plan. I never know what the next page is going to be….. But that’s the fun of writing a novel or a story, because I don’t know what’s going to happen next. — Haruki Murakami

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory. — Haruki Murakami

The good thing about writing book is that you can dream while you are awake. — Haruki Murakami

I’m not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don’t enjoy the writing, I stop. — Haruki Murakami

If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden. — Haruki Murakami

Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves. — Haruki Murakami

Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity. — Haruki Murakami

I have no idea! I have been writing for 35 years and from the beginning up to now the situation’s almost the same. I’m kind of an ugly duckling. Always the duckling, never the swan. — Haruki Murakami

You could be anybody when you’re writing. That’s the reason that I’m writing: to be anybody. You can put your feet in various shoes and experience anything. — Haruki Murakami

Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I’m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them. — Haruki Murakami

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me. — Haruki Murakami

I closed my own jazz bar so I could be a man who can write novels as I like. I was pleased about that. This pleasure was connected to the pleasure of writing. — Haruki Murakami

It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life. — Haruki Murakami

Perhaps I’m just too painstaking a type of person, but I can’t grasp much of anything without putting down my thoughts in writing. — Haruki Murakami