Colorless Haruki Quotes

There's not a branch of publishing or broadcasting that doesn't depend in some way on advertising. It'd be like an aquarium without water. Why, ninety-five percent of the information that reaches you has already been preselected and paid for. ~ Haruki Murakami

I like to write. I like to choose the right word, I like to write the right sentence. It's just like gardening or something. You put the seed into the soil at the right time, in the right place. ~ Haruki Murakami

He liked doing research in the library. He liked feeling of accumulating knowledge in his brain. It was something he had enjoyed ever since he was a child. ~ Haruki Murakami

Funny isn't it? I can get almost anything I want. Except the one thing I want the most. ~ Haruki Murakami

Lying there, I close my eyes for a time, then open them. I silently breathe in, then out. A thought begins to form in my mind, but in the end I think of nothing. Not that there was much difference between the two, thinking and not thinking. I find I can no longer distinguish between one thing and another, between things that existed and things that did not. I look out the window. Until the sky turns white, clouds float by, birds chirp, and a new day lumbers up, gathering together the sleepy minds of the people who inhabit this planet. ~ Haruki Murakami

The more you think about illusions, the more they'll swell up and take on form. And no longer be an illusion. ~ Haruki Murakami

I wanted to begin a new life where I didn't know a soul. ~ Haruki Murakami

This was the second stage in my life, a step in my personal evolution
abandoning the idea of being different, and settling for normal ... Gradually I drew nearer to the world, and the world drew nearer to me. ~ Haruki Murakami

The years 19 and 20 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. It's true. So think about it carefully. ~ Haruki Murakami

Everybody burns out in this world; amateur, pro, it doesn't matter, they all burn out, they all get hurt, the OK guys and the not-OK guys both. That's why everybody takes out a little insurance. I've got some too, here at the bottom of the heap. That way, you manage to survive if you burn out. If you're all by yourself and don't belong anywhere, you go down once, and you're out. Finished. ~ Haruki Murakami

In the darkness, I returned to that small world of hers. ~ Haruki Murakami

I'd made it back to the land of the living. No matter how boring or mediocre a world it might be, this was it. ~ Haruki Murakami

As if a great creature had grown old without being able to express its feelings. Not that it didn't know how to express them, but rather it didn't know what to express. ~ Haruki Murakami

Well, what else can they do? We all just keep doing the same things. ~ Haruki Murakami

The process involved a good deal of pain, but without such pain nothing would be resolved. ~ Haruki Murakami

The cause of it all was a slight oversight, one small operation out of order. Sure, it was her fault, her responsibility, if it came to that, but from where I stood it seemed like a common enough mishap. A momentary lapse and - glitch! Could have happened to anyone. But not to her. A tiny crack in her head widened into a fissure, eventually becoming a gaping chasm. She wouldn't, she couldn't take another step. At a total loss for words, she froze in place. She was a sorry sight, a ship sinking slowly in the night sea. ~ Haruki Murakami

A sense of calm envelopes me, a feeling close to rapture. Swimming is one of the best things in my life. It has never solved any problems, but it has done no harm, and nothing has ever ruined it for me. Swimming. ~ Haruki Murakami

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories. ~ Haruki Murakami

There was nothing I could say, so I said nothing. ~ Haruki Murakami

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. ~ Haruki Murakami

I turned my palms upward in the sunlight. In an instant, they felt warm, as though the light were seeping into the skin, soaking into the very lines of my fingerprints. The light ruled over everything out here. Bathed in light, each object glowed with the brilliant color of summer. Even intangibles such as time and memory shared the goodness of the summer light. ~ Haruki Murakami

Rousseau defined civilizations as when people build fences. ~ Haruki Murakami

Maybe she's not looking at me, but beyond me. In the depths of our crater lake, all is silent. The volcano's been extinct for ages. Layer upon layer of solitude, like folds of soft mud. The little bit of light that manages to penetrate to the depths lights up the surroundings like the remnants of some faint, distant memory. ~ Haruki Murakami

People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream. ~ Haruki Murakami

And then it struck him what lay buried far down under the earth on which his feet were so firmly planted: the ominous rumbling of the deepest darkness, secret rivers that transported desire, slimy creatures writhing, the lair of earthquakes ready to transform whole cities into mounds of rubble. These, too, were helping to create the rhythm of the earth. He stopped dancing and, catching his breath, stared at the ground beneath his feet as though peering into a bottomless hole. ~ Haruki Murakami

I read Naoko's letter again and again, and each time I read it I would be filled with the same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body, it had neither shape nor weight, nor could I wrap myself in it. ~ Haruki Murakami

The worst thoughts usually strike in the dead of the night. ~ Haruki Murakami

All efforts of reason and analysis are, in a word, like trying to slice through a watermelon with sewing needles. They may leave marks on the outer rind, but the fruity pulp will remain perpetually out of reach. ~ Haruki Murakami

I'm a writer, not a professional runner. It's fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration. ~ Haruki Murakami

It's the same as a hereditary disease, weakness. No matter how much you understand it, there's nothing you can do to cure yourself. It's not going to go away with a clap of the hand. It just keeps getting worse and worse ~ Haruki Murakami

He was with energetic young college girls. It was like playing with a kitten, fresh and fun at first, but tiring in the end. ~ Haruki Murakami

What confused and disappointed me, thought, was that I could never discover within her something special that existed just for me. A list of her good qualities far outstripped a list of her faults, and certainly far outshone my own, yet there was something missing, something absolutely vital. If only I'd been able to pin down what that was, I know we would have ended up sleeping together. I wouldn't have held back forever. Even if it had taken a long time, I would have persuaded her that it was absolutely necessary for her to sleep with me. But I lacked the confidence to see this through. ~ Haruki Murakami

Tsukuru didn't know what to say. The strength drained out of him. Like water leaking from a small hole in a bag. ~ Haruki Murakami

Surfing's a more profound kind of sport than it looks. When you surf, you learn not to fight the power of nature, even if it gets violent. ~ Haruki Murakami

Just listen to the wind," he says. "That's what I always do." I ~ Haruki Murakami

Time, of course, topples everyone in its path equally- the way that driver beats his old horse until it dies. But the thrashing we receive is one of frightful gentleness. Few of us even realize that we are being beaten. ~ Haruki Murakami

Any religion that would prohibit life-saving surgery simply because it goes against the literal word of the Bible cane nothing other than a cult. This is an abuse of dogma that crosses the line. ~ Haruki Murakami

Let's say you are an empty vessel. So what? What's wrong with that?" Eri said. "You're still a wonderful, attractive vessel. And really, does anybody know who they are? So why not be a completely beautiful vessel? The kind people feel good about, the kind people want to entrust with precious belongings. ~ Haruki Murakami

Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep. ~ Haruki Murakami

But there are times in this world when it's not enough just not to do the wrong thing ~ Haruki Murakami

Lies are terrible things. One could say that the greatest sins afflicting modern society are the proliferation of lies and silence. We lie through our teeth, then swallow our tongues. All the same, were we to speak only the truth all year round, then the truth might lose its value. ~ Haruki Murakami

They tell us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,but I don't believe that." he said.
Then, a moment later, he added: "Oh,the fear is there, all right. It comes to us in many different forms, at different times, and overwhelms us. But the most frightening thing we can do at such times is to turn our backs on it, to close our eyes. For then we take the most precious thing inside us and surrender it to something else. In my case, that something was the wave. ~ Haruki Murakami

You will be turning thirty soon, Mr. Kawana, which means that, from now on, you will gradually enter that twilight portion of life - you will be getting older. ~ Haruki Murakami

In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains - flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado's intensity doesn't abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost. ~ Haruki Murakami

I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. ~ Haruki Murakami

I turn a corner," I offered, "just as someone ahead of me turns the next corner. I can't see what that person looks like. All I can make out is a flash of white coattails. But the whiteness of the coattails is indelibly etched in my consciousness. Ever get that feeling? ~ Haruki Murakami

What alternative is there to the media's "Us" versus "Them"? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this "righteous" position of "ours" all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the "dirty" distortions in "their" thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we'll remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy. ~ Haruki Murakami

My sister's looking off to the side so half her face is in shadow and her smile is neatly cut in half. It's like one of those Greek tragedy masks in a textbook that's half one idea and half the opposite. Light and dark. Hope and despair. Laughter and sadness. Trust and loneliness. ~ Haruki Murakami