Haruki Murakami

“she started asking me all kinds of personal questions – how many girls had I slept with? Where I was from? Which university did I go to? What kind of music did I like? Had I ever read any novels by Osamu Dazai? Where would I like to go if I could travel abroad? Did I think her nipples were too big? I made up some answers and went to sleep, but next morning she said she wanted to have breakfast with me, and she kept up the stream of questions over the tasteless eggs and toast and coffee. What kind of work did my father do? Did I get good marks at school? What month was I born? Had I ever eaten frogs? She was giving me a headache, so as soon as we had finished eating I said I had to go to work. . .”

“It depends on which reality you take and which reality I take.” (p. 318).”

“Me daba la sensación de que todo estaba decidido de antemano y que luego la realidad lo calcaba todo minuciosamente.”

“I don't think I'd want Mickey Mouse pimping for me anyway.”

“Ms Soga," he begins, "when they called the register in school your name would have come before Ms Tanaka, and after Ms Sekine. Did you file a complaint abotu that? Did you object, askign them to reverse the order? Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revoliution just because it follows 67?”

“Lumea in care traim noi nu e decat un urias apartament de prezentare.Intri, te asezi, bei un ceai , admiri privelistea de la geam, multumesti si pleci.”

“If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation.”

“No matter how long you stand there examining yourself naked before a mirror, you'll never see reflected what's inside.”

“It's difficult to teach how to write novels, but teaching swimming is just as hard.”

“I'm struck by how pitiful and pointless this little container called me is, what a lame, shabby being I am. I feel like everything I've ever done in life has been a total waste.”

“Sixteen is an intensely troublesome age. You worry about little things, can't pinpoint where you are in any objective way, become really proficient at strange, pointless skills, and are held in thrall by inexplicable complexes. As you get older, though, through trial and error you can learn to get what you need, and throw out what should be discarded. And you start to recognize (or be resigned to the fact) that since your faults and deficiences are well nigh infinite, you'd best figure our your good points and learn to get by with what you have.”

“If there are this many visible parts of my body that are worse than normal people's, then if I start considering other aspects — personality, brains, athleticism, things of this sort — the list will be endless.”

“Daca pe lume nu exista bine absolut, nu exista nici rau absolut...Binele si raul nu sunt niste lucruri fixe si neclintite, ci isi schimba necontenit locul si pozitia. Un bine se poate transforma in clipa urmatoare intr-un rau si viceversa...Important este sa se mentina un echilibru intre cele doua. Daca balanta se inclina prea mult intr-o parte , e greu sa se mai poata pastra o moralitate. Echilibrul in sine e un lucru bun.”

“Oricat de minutios si de infocat ai rescrie trecutul, prezentul va ramane, in linii mari, acelasi. Timpul are forta necesara de a anula una dupa alta orice schimbare artificiala. Indiferent de cate corecturi si revizii i-ai face, se intoarce negresit la curgerea lui initiala.”

“Podría decirse que las personas van cayendo en silencio, una tras otra, por el borde del mundo que me pertenece. Todas encaminan hacia allí sus pasos y, de repente, desaparecen. Quizás el borde del mundo esté en aquel lugar.”

“Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.”

“Most of the troubles in life come on all of a sudden.”

“Just because there's an end doesn't mean existence has meaning. An end point is simply set up as a temporary marker or perhaps as an indirect metaphor for the fleeting nature of existence.”

“An unhealthy soul requires a healthy body.”

“When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?”

“It's sometimes hard to avoid losing. Nobody's going to win all the time.”

“I don't think we should judge the value of our lives by how efficient they are.”

“If people who rely on natural spring of talent suddenly find they're exhausted their only source, they're in trouble.”

“The only way to understand what's really fair is to take a long-range view of things.”

“Some people can work their butts off and never get what they're aiming for while others can get it without any effort at all.”

“I'm the kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do.”

“Most people probably didn't think I'd make it as a professional writer. But I couldn't follow their advice.”

“I had been given a wonderful opportunity to be a novelist — a chance you just don't get every day.”

“Running a service-oriented business means you have to accept whoever comes through the door. No matter who comes in, unless they're really awful, you have to greet them with a friendly smile on your face.”

“I never had any ambitions to be a novelist.”

“There are lots of things we never understand, no matter how many years we put on, no matter how much experience we accumulate.”

“Fantasielose Enge, Intoleranz. Dogmatische Thesen, hohle Begriffe, eigenmächtige Ideale, rigide Systeme. Für mich sind das sehr beängstigende Dinge, die ich von ganzem Herzen verabscheue. Natürlich ist die Frage, was richtig oder falsch ist, von großer Bedeutung. Aber schon ein einziges Fehlurteil kann oft nie wieder rückgängig gemacht werden. Selbst wenn man den Mut hat, den Fehler einzugestehen, ist es hinterher meist zu spät. Engstirnigkeit und Intoleranz sind wie Parasiten. Sie wechseln immer wieder ihren Wirt und ändern ihre Form. Es gibt keine Rettung vor ihnen.”

“You have to make an effort to always look at the good side, always think about the good things. Then you've got nothing to be afraid of. If something bad comes up, you do more thinking at that point.”

“You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.”

“The past and the present, might we say, go like this. The future is a maybe. Yet we look back on the darkness that obscures the path that brought us fair, we only come up with another indefinite maybe. The only thing we perceive with any clarity is the present moment, and even that just passes by.”

“Good question, but no answer. Good questions never have answers.”

“When it's all over, it'll seem like a dream.”

“If everybody went around understanding each other without asking questions or speaking their mind, they'd never get anywhere.”

“A person probably couldn't live without pride. But living by pride, alone the prospects were too dark. Way too dark.”

“Things that come out of nowhere go back to nowhere, that's all.”

“There is a slight difference between collecting fifty wine labels and collecting fifty pinball machines.”

“There are — how do you say — things in this world our philosophy cannot account for.”

“Like the song says, rainy days and Mondays always get ya down.”

“You keep floudering and never get anywhere.”

“Nah, I shook my head, things that come out of nowhere go back to nowhere, that’s all.We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died long ago. Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when death claimed me, no doubt I would walk along by that faint light in the brief instant before being flung once again into the abyss of nothingness.”

“It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.”

“I want to write stories that are different from the ones I've written so far, Junpei thought: I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. But right now I have to stay here and keep watch over this woman and this girl. I will never let anyone-not anyone-try to put them into that crazy box- not even if the sky should fall or the earth crack open with a roar.”

“There are symbolic dreams-dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities-realities that symbolize a dream”

“She curled up and pressed her cheek against his chest. Her ear was right above his heart. She was listening to his thoughts. "I need to know this," Aomame said. "That we're in the same world, seeing the same things.”

“Enough with these stupid metaphors. They don't do any good.”