Haruki Murakami Quotes

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

Without pain, there would be no suffering. Without suffering, we would never learn from our mistakes.

Music brings people together.

Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.

I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it.

In a world filled with chaos, find your refuge in books.

Even chance meetings are the result of karma.

People are full of contradictions. They’re lonely yet they have crowds of friends.

Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.

Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

Nobody likes being alone that much. I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.

When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Each time something like that happens, I have to abandon a little more of myself. I can’t go through that again. I can’t!

Starting from zero takes longer than you think, but if you keep going, you’ll get there.

As time goes on, you’ll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn’t, doesn’t. Time solves most things. And what time can’t solve, you have to solve yourself.

You can’t predict how things will turn out. But you can keep them from turning out too badly.

Even a world that’s sick and crazy is divided into upper- and lower-case letters.

How can you understand and be understood when the words are all jumbled up?

You’ll have a great time whenever you are as long as you are ‘you’.

I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy. My reality is just different from yours.

The wind blowing through my hair, the breeze on my face – these were the true pleasures.

When I wake up, the real nightmare begins.

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I’m gazing at a distant star. It’s dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn’t even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.

I hide my wounds in my writing.

I forget what I want to remember, and I remember what I want to forget.

I’m a daydreamer and a night thinker.

People don’t always have to be friends to help each other out.

All I ever did was live my life the way I wanted to.

The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.

I closed my eyes and listened carefully to the sounds around me, searching for a name. No use. No matter how hard you search, you can’t find a name without a body.

But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.

No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves.

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

No matter how hard you try, there are some things you just can’t erase.

Some people just can’t let go of their pain. Not until it gives them permission.

No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.

Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.

I’m left with nothing but freedom.

I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?

Closed inside my stone coffin, I kept pace by counting spaghetti.

The darkness inside me, that’s what frightens me the most.

I’m as free as I can be in this town.

Time can heal but it can also deepen the wound.

You have to be prepared to take risks in your life, both large and small.

I have come to the conclusion that those who make no decisions are nobodies.

Those who know me well say I have an affinity with memory.