Ryu Murakami Quotes

It was a face that instantly robbed those who gazed upon it of a good thirty percent
of the energy they needed to go on living.

I don't need to eat the stuff now because now I'm here-right in the middle of it!The soup I ordered in Colorado had all these little slices of vegetables and things, which at the time just looked like kitchen scrapings to me. But now I'm in the miso soup myself,just like those bits of vegetable. I'm floating around in this giant bowl of it, and that's good enough for me.

Sinteen-years -old girls are probably the most sensitive and perceptive group of people in this entire country.

Malevolence is born of negative feelings like loneliness and sadness and anger. It comes from an emptiness inside you that feels as if it's been carved out with a knife, an emptiness you're left with when something very important has been taken away from you

People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneliness with stress and enervation, and all sorts of madness can occur. Anxiety increases, and in order to obliterate the anxiety, people turn to extreme sex, violence, and even murder.

The feeling that the world was at my feet and the feeling that I alone was cut off from the world, the sense of power and the anxiety, had both stayed with me ever since that evening at the pond.

Just before I fell asleep, I had a moment of panic ...

And just because I've written this book, don't think I've changed. I'm like I was back then, really.

Parents, teachers, government - they all teach you how to live the dreary , deadening life of a slave, but nobody teaches you how to live normally.

This was a factory, a sorting house. We were no different from dogs and pigs and cows: all of us were allowed to play when we were small, but then, just before reaching maturity, we were sorted and classified. Being a high school student was the first step toward becoming a domestic animal.

I hate people who break down crying when you're trying to talk about something important. Men and women both. You can't trust weepy people. They think they're the center of the world, and that their tears can absolve them of anything.

Who hasn't wanted to die at one time or another?

That soft but penetrating voice that caressed your ears and climbed through your brain like a vine.

A person without self-confidence is incapable of being independent, and people who are dependent on their partners always create unhappiness. Always.

When you're in an extreme situation you tend to avoid facing it by getting caught up in little details. Like a guy who's decided to commit suicide and boards a train only to become obsessed with whether he remembered to lock the door when he left home.

Nice person, bad person
that's not the level this girl is at. I can see you're crazy about her and probably won't be able to hear this, Ao-chan, but I think you'd be better off staying away from someone like her. I can't read her exactly, but I can tell you she's either a saint or a monster. Maybe both extremes at once, but not somewhere in between.

That's what violence was: emotion leaking out from consciousness into the physical world, linking up with the muscles of the arms and shoulders and diaphragm and, inevitably, the face. Stifle emotion during an act of violence and the face becomes a blank, unreadable mask.

Yeah. He wants to be a ... what do you call those guys?" "A sommelier?" "Right. Said he wanted to see your collection." "At fifteen he's already decided what he wants to be?" "Lots of guys have." "Is that wise? To limit your options at such a young age?

They don't realise that they've changed; they think it's the world that changed.

When you're a kid, getting lost isn't just an event or a situation, it's like a career move. You get this thrill of anxiety and fear and a feeling that you've done something that can never be undone.

There's always something in miso soup

She's like smoke:you think you're seeing her clearly enough,but when you reach for her there's nothing there

Self-esteem isn't an emotion. Self-esteem is just self-knowledge, a solid understanding of your limitations. It's living according to your own standards.

People who love horror films are people with boring lives ... when a really scary movie is over, you're reassured to see that you're still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That's the real reason we have horror films - they act as shock absorbers - and if they disappeared altogether, I bet you'd see a big leap in the number of serial killers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news.

She stepped towards the door beneath the sign, then stopped and looked back at him. 'You'll be right here, right?'
'I promise.'
'And you'll stay with me tonight, won't you?'
'Of course. I won't leave you.'
I've got to snuff her as soon as possible and get this over with, Kawashima thought as he watched her enter the building.

Having nothing better to do, meandered off to a coffee shop and sat facing each other for a couple of hours, neither of them talking much but each coming to the general conclusion that the other was a person rather like himself ...

Every one of a hundred thousand cities around the world had its own special sunset and it was worth going there, just once, if only to see the sun go down.

I remembered reading in a hard-boiled detective novel that if you drink in the same place two nights in a row, the bartender and waiters will remember your face.

Basically people who love horror movies are people with boring lives. They want to be stimulated, and they need to reassure themselves, because when a really scary movie is over, you're reassured to see that you're still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That's the real reason we have horror films - they act as shock absorbers - and if they disappeared altogether it would mean losing one of the few ways we have to ease the anxiety of the imagination. And I bet you'd see a big leap in the number of serial killers and mass murderers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news, right?

Children would struggle desperately to feel love for their parents. Rather than hate a parent, in fact, they'd choose to hate themselves. Love and violence became so intertwined for them that when they grew up and got into relationships, only hysteria could set their hearts at ease.

The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different than the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there

I don't really know how to say it, but if you're really honestly having fun, you're not supposed to think and look for things right in the middle of it, am I right?

We sat side by side on the swings. The creaking sound they made seemed sexier to me than a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo.

That's when he hit her, when he saw how scared she was. He couldn't bear it that she was frightened and asking for help. Asking for help is wrong. Because there isn't any such thing as help in this world.

The fragment of glass with the blood on its edge, as it soaked up the dawn air, was almost transparent.

It was a boundless blue, almost transparent. I stood up, and as I walked toward my own apartment, I thought, I want to become like this glass. And then I want to reflect this smooth white curving myself. I want to show other people these splendid curves reflected in me.

Even when you're talking to them face to face you have this feeling of not connecting, as if the words just pass through them. Sometimes they remind me of the Invisible Man, but I've never quite understood why they end up that way.

To distort our faces with joy, or wail and weep with sorrow, or collapse in agony, or wallow in sentimentality – wasn't an inviolable human trait but something we can lose simply by leading dull and dreary lives. 'A rich emotional life,' she'd written, 'is a privilege reserved only for the daring few'.

Anyone who's had a visit from them has discovered
an important fact about life: namely, that misery grows up all by itself, in a
hidden place, without your even being aware of it, and then one day, suddenly, it
knocks on your door. Happiness is just the opposite. Happiness is a cute little
flower on your veranda, or a baby canary. You can see it growing, little by little,
right before your eyes.

I'm sure we've all experienced really malevolent feelings once or twice in our lives, the desire to kill somebody,say.but there's always a braking mechanism somewhere along the line that stop us.

In Japan, even when you're alone, you're never really that lonely. But the loneliness you feel living among people with differently coloured skin and eyes, whose language you don't even speak very well - that sort of loneliness is something you feel down to the marrow of your bones.

It's always precisely the sort of smug old wanker you would never ever want to end up like. We don't live the way you tell us to because we're afraid that if we do we'll grow up to be like you, and the thought of that is unbearable. It's alright for you because you'll be dead soon anyway, but we've still got another fifty or sixty years to live in this stinking country.

But why is it that if you imagine a baby who smells of milk, for example, you can't help smiling? Why is there such an agreement around the world about what is or isn't a foul smell? Who decided what smells bad? Is it impossible that somewhere in this world there are people who, if they sat next to a homeless fellow they'd get the urge to snuggle up to him, but if they sat next to a baby they'd get an urge to kill it?

No forgiveness for lies.

It was the face of a human being who'd been constructed exclusively of wounds. Not time or history or ambition, nothing but wounds. The face of a person who could probably kill someone without feeling anything whatsoever.

She wanted to find out about the gods of this country, but she couldn't find any books on the subject in Spanish, and she doesn't read English, so she asked a lot of her customers, but apparently none of the Japanese knew anything, which made her wonder if people here never came up against the kind of suffering where you can't do anything but turn to your god for help. . .

Memories are't like words; they're soft and gooey. Covered with a sticky slime, like a penis after sex, or your vagina when you menstruate, and shaped like tadpoles or tiny watersnakes

You're always trying so hard to see something, just like you're taking notes, like some scholar doing research, right? Or just like a little kid. You really are a little kid, when you're a kid you try to see everything, don't you? Babies look right into the eyes of people they don't know and cry or laugh, but now you just try and look right into people's eyes, you'll go nuts before you know it. Just try it, try looking right into the eyes of people walking past, you'll start feeling funny pretty soon, Ryū, you shouldn't look at things like a baby.

I remembered a friend who'd died of a bad liver, and what he'd always said.

Yeah, he'd said, maybe it's just my idea, but really it always hurts, the times it don't hurt is when we just forget, we just forget it hurts, you know, it's not just because my belly's all rotten, everybody always hurts. So when it really starts stabbing me, somehow I feel sort of peaceful, like I'm myself again. It's hard to take, sure, but I feel sort of peaceful. Because it's always hurt ever since I was born.

The song was the late Ishihara Yujiro's "Rusty Knife," and Sakaguchi's singing was so bad that it
gave the lyric a strange new pathos and poignancy. Listening to his version, Suzuki Midori was
reminded that no one ever said it would be easy to go on living in this world; Takeuchi Midori
pondered the noble truth that nobody's life consists exclusively of happy times; Henmi Midori
vowed to remember that it's best to keep an open heart and forgive even those who've
trespassed against us; and Tomiyama Midori had to keep telling herself that hitting rock bottom
is in fact the first step to a hopeful new future.

They needed a reason why a little kid would commit murder, someone or something to point the finger at, and I think they were relieved when they hit upon horror movies as the culprit. But there's no reason a child commits murder, just as there's no reason a child gets lost. What would it be - because his parents weren't watching him? That's not a reason, it's just a step in the process.

Advertising departments, as you know, are crawling with people whose frontal lobes are so underdeveloped that if you flatter them a bit they'll swear shit is platinum.

Most of the advice was along the lines of, "If you persevere in your efforts you will surely succeed," which is bullshit, if you ask me. People who turn to stuff like this have probably already persevered and gotten nowhere.

What makes somebody nice or unpleasant to be around is the way they communicate. When people are fucked up, their communication is fucked up.

Did you know that only a tiny minority of viruses cause illness in humans? No one knows how many viruses there are, but their real role, when you get right down to it, is to aid in mutations, to create diversity among life forms. I've read a lot of books on the subject-when you don't need much sleep you have a lot of time to read-and I can tell you that if it weren't for viruses, mankind would never have evolved on this planet. Some viruses get right inside the DNA and change your genetic code, did you know that? And no one can say for sure that HIV, for example, won't one day prove to have been rewriting our genetic code in a way that's essential to our survival as a race. I'm a man who consciously commits murders and scares the hell out of people and makes them reconsider everything, so I'm definitely malignant, yet I think I play a necessary role in this world.

TV sounds are all the same; there's no difference between the sound of the wind in Northern Ireland and the wind on a Polynesian island.

The world's worst flavor combination was mango and menthol.

There in that pool stained with green blood, he had learned two things: one was that all the pain stopped when you stopped fighting death; and the other was that as long as you could still hear your heart beating, you had to keep fighting back.

Words themselves aren't that important. Even if somebody says words that shock you, or make you want to kill them, or make you tremble with emotion, the words themselves you tend to forget in time. Words are just tools we use to express or communicate something.

Everybody wants to talk about themselves, and everybody wants to hear everybody else's story, so we take turns playing reporter and celebrity.

It was the perfect time and place for an inherently timid person like him to express his
inner pervert by peeing in public.

All Americans have something lonely about them. I don't know what the reason might be, except maybe that they're all descended from immigrants.

I thought if I were beautiful enough, all my dreams would come true. But you don't steady beautiful forever; one day you wake up and it's gone, and then where are you? Dreams are made with blood and sweat and tears.

That was with me for years
feeling I wasn't myself. And I do think I wasn't my real self then. Of course, I'm not sure there is such a thing as a real self. You could ransack your innards looking for the real you and never find it
slice yourself open and all you'll find is blood and muscle and bone.

When I went on anyway, my body began to grow cold, and I thought I
was dead. Face pale, my dead self sat down on a bench and began to turn
toward my real self, who was watching this hallucination on the screen of the
night. My dead self came nearer, just as if it might want to shake hands with my
real self. That's when I panicked and tried to run. But my dead self pursued me
and finally caught me, entered me and controlled me. I'd felt then just the way I
felt now. I felt as if a hole had opened in my head from which consciousness
and memory leaked out and in their place the rash crowded in, and a cold like
spoiled roast chicken. But that time before, shaking and clinging to the damp
bench, I'd told myself, Hey, take a good look, isn't the world still under your
feet? I'm on this ground, and on this same ground are trees and grass and ants
carrying sand to their nests, little girls chasing rolling balls, and puppies running.

I learned two important things about the sound I was searching for: that it had to be indirect, refracted or muffled in some way; and that the sound had to give the impression that it would continue forever- the sound of someone practicing piano heard faintly from an unknown direction, or the sound of gentle rain outside a window, punctuated by drops falling on the casement.

After hanging up the phone Aoyama sank back back on the sofa feeling like a balloon in a warm blue sky.