Quotes by Haruki Murakami

About Haruki Murakami:

Haruki Murakami is a contemporary Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside his native country.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

They had stolen my memories from me! Nobody had that right. Nobody! My memories belonged to me. Stealing memories was stealing time. I got so mad, I lost all fear. I didn't care what happened. I want to live! I told myself. I will live. I will get ou...

Haruki Murakami

Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.

Haruki Murakami

That's the way it is with the mind. Nothing is ever equal. Like a river, as it flows, the course changes with the terrain.

Haruki Murakami

Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.

Haruki Murakami

I study the chessboard and concede defeat. "You can gain yourself in five moves" says the Colonel. "Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over.

Haruki Murakami

piensa que el hecho de que no existan luchas, odio ni deseos significa que tampoco existen las cosas opuestas. Es decir, la alegría, la paz de espíritu, el amor. Porque es de la desesperanza, del desengaño y de la tristeza de donde nace la alegrí...

Haruki Murakami

I never had what it takes to make a first-rate anything.' 'That's wrong,' she declared. 'Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it?' But school doesn't know how to draw it out. It crushes the ...

Haruki Murakami

Grandfather always said school's a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain. Grandfather hardly went to school either.

Haruki Murakami

Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?

Haruki Murakami

I shouted into the phone, but there was no reply. Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke from the mouth of a gun.

Haruki Murakami

I never trust people with no appetite. It's like they're always holding something back on you.

Haruki Murakami

They dig holes from time to time,' the Colonel explains. 'It is probably for them what chess is for me. It has no special meaning, does not transport them anywhere. All of us dig at our own pure holes. We have nothing to achieve by our activities, no...

Haruki Murakami

The early autumn sun glinted on the water, an enormous mirror ground to powder and scattered.

Haruki Murakami

Dreams are things from the past. They aren't from the future. That wasn't you imprisoned there. You imprison your dreams. You understand? Yeah, I'd say. But I wasn't convinced.

Haruki Murakami

Samsa certainly had no idea what lay ahead. He was in the dark about everything: the future, of course, but the present and the past as well . What was right, and what was wrong? Just learning how to dress was a riddle.

Haruki Murakami

Samsa looked down in dismay at his naked body. How ill-formed it was! Worse than ill-formed. It possessed no means of self-defense. Smooth white skin (covered by only a perfunctory amount of hair) with fragile blue blood vessels visible through it; a...

Haruki Murakami

The world follows its own course. Each possesses his own thoughts, each treads his own path. So it is with your mother, and so it is with your starling. As it is with everyone. The world follows its own course.

Haruki Murakami

No matter what the situation may be, I still take pleasure in witnessing the joy of others.

Haruki Murakami

Some people get a kick out of reading railway timetables and that's all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?" "Kind of ...

Haruki Murakami

The years nineteen and twenty are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older.

Haruki Murakami

This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to ...

Haruki Murakami

Author Bio

  • NameHaruki Murakami
  • DescriptionJapanese author, novelist
  • AliasesMurakami Haruki
  • BornJanuary 12, 1949
  • CountryJapan
  • ProfessionLinguist; Novelist; Writer; Translator; Essayist
  • WorksA Wild Sheep Chase; Norwegian Wood; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; Kafka On The Shore; 1Q84
  • AwardsFranz Kafka Prize; Yomiuri Prize; Tanizaki Prize; Jerusalem Prize; Noma Literary Prize; World Fantasy Award For Best Novel; Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award