Haruki Murakami

“If writers only wrote about things everybody knew, what the hell would be the point of writing?”

“It was a stillness so profound one had to adjust one’s hearing to it.....The silence seemed to be trying to tell him something about itself.”

“Expression and communication are essential; without these, civilization ends.”

“Even if you don't acknowledge it, people die, and guys sleep with girls. That's just how it is.”

“Still, in the end, we all die just the same.”

“The things we try our hardest not to lose, we really just put deep abysses in the spaces between them.”

“People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream.”

“I'd like to ask you more about your ears if I may," I said."You want to ask whether or not my ears possess some special power?" I nodded. "See what I mean?" She said. She’d become so beautiful, it defied understanding. Never had I feasted my eyes on such beauty. It transcended all concepts within the boundaries of my awareness. She was at one with her ears, gliding down the oblique face of time like a protean beam of light. "You are extraordinary." I said after catching my breath. "I know." she said. "These are my ears in their unblocked state."Several of the other customers were now turned our way, staring agape at her. The waiter who came over with more coffee couldn't pour properly. Not a soul uttered a word, only the reels on the tape deck kept slowly spinning. She retrieved a clove cigarette from her purse and put it to her lips. I hurriedly offered her a light with my lighter. "I want to sleep with you," She said. So we slept together.”

“Ionako je sve to mašta. Nas dvojica pijemo i maštamo, to je sve. Drugačije je od niskobudžetnih filmova u kojima ti često igraš. Za maštu nema budžeta.”

“I want to believe you, but if that's true, I just don't get it. Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean, if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone?”

“I was at that age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind.”

“How many times have you said, 'This is it. I've finally found my one true love'? And how many times has the reality turned out differently? Paperback romances and fairy tales promote an ideal of a first and only love, but few of us can claim to have had such uncomplicated good fortune. For most people, the process of finding the perfect partner is one trial and error: breakups, makeups, missed opportunities and misunderstandings. Human love is a fragile creation, and sometimes the smallest thing - the wrong choice of words or a single clumsy gesture - can make love shatter, stall or fade away.”

“Don't blame me. That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution.”

“I don't think you will ever be able to understand what it is like - the utter loneliness, the feeling of desperation - to be abandoned in a deep well in the middle of the desert at the edge of the world, overcome by intense pain in total darkness. I went so far as to regret that the Mongolian noncom had not simply shot me and got it over with. If I had been killed that way, at least they would have been aware of my death. If I died here, however, it would be truly a lonely death, a death of no concern to anyone, a silent death.”

“His mind floated in the amniotic fluid of memory, listening for echoes of the past. His father, meanwhile, had no idea that such a vivid scene was burned into Tengo's brain or that, like a cow in the meadow, Tengo was endlessly regurgitating fragments of the scene to chew on, a cud from which he obtained essential nutrients. Father and son: each was locked in a deep, dark embrace with his secrets.”

“I can't imagine finding anybody to take your place.""You might not find a person that easily, but you could probably find a way without too much trouble," Aomama noted.The dowager looked at Aomame calmly, her lips forming a satisfied smile. "That may be true," she said, "but I almost surely could never find anthing to take the place of what we are sharing here and now. You are you and only you. I'm very grateful for that. More grateful than I can say.”

“Any friend of Gatsby is a friend of mine.”

“Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper.”

“Soy yo mismo de un modo sumamente natural e inevitable. Dado que es un hecho evidente, no me importa demasiado lo que los demás piensen de mí. La manera en que los demás me ven no me atañe. Más bien, eso es algo que sólo les atañe a ellos.”

“Its Barnum & Bailey world just as phony as it can be,But it would't be make-believe if you believed in me”

“Cu cat trec anii,parca se lungeste si timpul,asemeni unei umbre la amurg .E trist ce spun eu acum ,dar e adevarat (...) Mi-e foarte teama ca,intr-o buna zi,intunericul va inghiti umbra cu totul.”

“Daca am citi doar ce citesc si altii ,am ajunge sa gandim ca toata lumea.”

“moartea nu se afla la polul opus al vietii ,ci face parte din viata”

“I get up out of bed. I pull back the old, faded curtain and openthe window. I stick my head out and look up at the sky. Sureenough, a mouldy-coloured half-moon hangs in the sky. Good.We’re both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We’reconnected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietlydraw it towards me.”

“I really wanted to see you,” I said.“And I really wanted to see you, too,” she said. “When Icouldn’t see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as ifthe planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I reallyneed you. You’re a part of me; I’m a part of you. You know,somewhere—I’m not at all sure where—I think I cutsomething’s throat. Sharpening my knife, my heart a stone.”

“When I was younger all kinds of people talked to me,” shesaid. “Told me all sorts of things. Fascinating stories, beautiful,strange stories. But past a certain point nobody talked to meany more. No one. Not my husband, my child, my friends …no one. Like there was nothing left in the world to talk about.Sometimes I feel like my body’s turning invisible, like you cansee right through me.”

“All over again I understood how important, how irreplaceable,Sumire was to me. In her own special way she’d kept metethered to the world. As I talked to her and read her stories,my mind quietly expanded, and I could see things I’d neverseen before. Without even trying, we grew close. Like a pair ofyoung lovers undressing in front of each other, Sumire and Ihad exposed our hearts to one another, an experience I’d neverhave with anyone else, anywhere. We cherished what we hadtogether, though we never put into words how very precious itwas.Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in aphysical way. We would have been far happier if we had. Butthat was like the tides, the change of seasons—somethingimmutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. Nomatter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendshipwasn’t going to last for ever. We were bound to reach a deadend. That was painfully clear.I loved Sumire more than anyone else and wanted her morethan anything in the world. And I couldn’t just shelve thosefeelings, for there was nothing to take their place.I dreamed that someday there’d be a sudden, majortransformation. Even if the chances of it coming true were slim, Icould dream about it, couldn’t I? But I knew it would nevercome true.”

“Lady, did you ever see anyone shot by a gunwithout bleeding?” This film came out at the height of the VietnamWar.I love that line. That’s gotta be one of the principles behindreality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leavingthem that way. And bleeding. Shooting and bleeding.”

“Itwas all so complicated, like something out of an existentialplay. Everything hit a dead end there, no alternatives left.”

“If I had my way, me too,” Sumire said, beaming. “But whatcan you do? Wonderful things always come to an end.”

“I never had a cat again. I still like cats, though I decided atthe time that that poor little cat who climbed the tree and neverreturned would be my first and last cat. I couldn’t forget thatlittle cat and start loving another.”

“It was hard to accept that she had almost no feelings, maybenone at all, for me as a man. This hurt so bad at times it felt likesomeone was gouging out my guts with a knife. Still, the time Ispent with her was more precious than anything.”

“The world’s crawling with stupid,innocent girls, and I’m just one of them, self-consciouslychasing after dreams that’ll never come true. I should shut thepiano lid and come down off the stage. Before it’s too late.”

“Tell me,” said Sumire, “have you ever felt confused aboutwhat you’re doing, like it’s not right?”“I spend more time being confused than not,” I answered.”

“Everybody’s got something weird about them,” I said.”

“My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff Iwant to write about,” she said. “Images, scenes, snatches ofwords … in my mind they’re all glowing, all alive. Write! theyshout at me. A great new story is about to be born I can feel it.It’ll transport me to some brand-new place. Problem is, once Isit at my desk and put them all down on paper, I realizesomething vital is missing. It doesn’t crystallize—no crystals,just pebbles. And I’m not transported anywhere.”

“TheEarth, after all, doesn’t creak and groan its way around the sunjust so human beings can have a good time and a bit of a laugh.”

“In the infinite loneliness ofspace, what could Laika possibly be looking at?”

“I learned that realism can come in all shapes and sizes. The world is bigenough for different values to coexist.”

“Passion can’t sustain itself forever.”

“A simple change of scenery can bring about powerful shifts in the flow of time and emotions”

“Being a bird, I imagined, must be wonderful. All birds had to do was fly. no need to worry about contraception.”

“To arrive at sex, you first have to undo the zip of the girl's dress. And between zip and sex lay a process in which twenty- maybe thirty- subtle decisions and judgements had to be made”

“We were both at a delicate age, when the mere fact that we went to different schools and lived two train stops apart was all it took for me to feel our worlds had changed completely”

“Homem, mulher ou cão, não se pode dizer que existam muitos seres humanos que mereçam a minha simpatia. (Tamaru)”

“The rain that fell on the city runs down the dark gutters and empties into the sea without even soaking the ground”

“Grammar is like the air: someone higher up might try to set rules for its use, but people won't necessarily follow them.”

“El hombre, al menos una vez en la vida, debe perderse en un erial y experimentar una soledad absoluta, sana, un poco aburrida incluso. Y así descubrirá que depende completamente de sí mismo y conocerá sus capacidades potenciales”

“I feel like I've swallowed a cloudy sky”

“I learned there were lots of realities in the world.”