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Haruki Murakami Quotes

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Famous Haruki Murakami Quotes

“...and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust. Until that time, I had understood death as something entirely separate from and independent of life. The hand of death is bound to take us, I had felt, but until the day it reaches out for us, it leaves us alone. This had seemed to me the simple, logical truth. Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.”

Life And DeathNorwegian WoodHaruki Murakami
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“I was also motivated by a strong sense of fear that we had still not begun to deal with, let alone solve, any of the fundamental issues arising from the gas attack. Specifically, for people who are outside the main system of Japanese society (the young in particular), there remains no effective alternative or safety net. As long as this crucial gap exists in our society, like a kind of black hole, even if Aum is suppressed, other magnetic force fields—"Aum-like" groups—will rise up again, and similar incidents are bound to take place.”

TerrorismNarrativeCultDoomsdayJudgment DayAumSarinTokyo Subway Attack
Book:Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
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“我要百分之百地发挥自己地能力，不达到极限绝不罢休。想拿的就拿，不想拿的就不拿，就这样生存下去。不行的话，到不行的时候再另行考虑。反过来想，不公平的社会同时也是大有用武之地的社会。” “这话像是有些我行我素的味道。” 我说。 “不过，我并不是仰脸望天静等苹果掉进嘴里，我在尽我的一切努力，在付出比你大十倍的努力。” “恐怕是的。” 我承认。 “所以，有时我环顾世人就气不打一处来——这些家伙为什么不知道努力呢？不努力何必还牢骚满腹呢？” 我惊讶地看着永泽的脸：“在我的印象中，世上的人也都在辛辛苦苦拼死拼活地忙个没完，莫不是我看错了？” “那不是努力，只是劳动。”

PotentialWorking HardUnfairness Of LifeKeeping Busy
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”

LoveAloneness
Book:Sputnik Sweetheart
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“There are a lot of things that aren't your fault. Or mine, either. Not the fault of prophecies, or curses, or DNA, or absurdity. Not the fault of Structuralism or the Third Industrial Revolution. We all die and disappear, but that's because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. Our lives are just shadows of that guiding principle. Say the wind blows. It can be a strong, violent wind or a gentle breeze. But eventually every kind of wind dies out and disappears. Wind doesn't have form. It's just a movement of air. You should listen carefully, and then you'll understand the metaphor.”

Life LessonsMetaphore
Author:Haruki Murakami
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“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful travelling companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal on their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing”

LoveLonlinessLonely LifeSputnik SweetheartMarukami
Book:Sputnik Sweetheart
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“I wore my suit and the polka-dot tie. As soon as I spotted Malta Kano, I tried to walk in her direction, but the crowd kept getting in my way. By the time I reached the bar, she was gone. The tropical drink stood there on the bar, in front of her now empty stool. I took the next seat at the bar and ordered a scotch on the rocks. The bartender asked me what kind of scotch I'd like, and I answered Cutty Sark. I really didn't care which brand of scotch he served me, but Cutty Sark was the first thing that came to mind.”

Mysterious WomanCutty Sark
Book:The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
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“Elegir es eso. Y uno tiene que elegir el bando que le ofrece mayores posibilidades, aunque la diferencia sea sólo de un miserable uno por ciento. Es como el ajedrez. Te dan un jaque mate, pero tú escapas. Y, mientras te estás escabullendo, es posible que tu adversario meta la pata. Por más poderoso que sea un contrincante, no puede descartarse la posibilidad de que cometa algún error.”

LuchaElegir
Book:Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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“Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.”

RelationshipsDestinyFriendships
Book:Sputnik Sweetheart
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“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.”

FearTraumaDisasterUncertaintyMortalityUnconscious MindCollective ConsciousnessUndergroundPost Catastrophe
Book:After the Quake
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