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Haruki Murakami Quotes

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Famous Haruki Murakami Quotes

“Latter-day capitalism. Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match. Like pulling on a Missoni sweater over Trussardi slacks and Pollini shoes, you can now enjoy hybrid styles of morality. It's the way of the world -- philosophy starting to look more and more like business administration.”

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Book:Dance Dance Dance
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“Kể về người chết đã là một việc vô cùng khó khăn nhưng kể về người con gái chết trẻ còn khó khăn gấp bội. Bởi chính vì đã mất đi mà họ sẽ còn thanh xuân mãi mãi. Ngược lại, những kẻ còn sống như chúng ta đây thì sẽ già đi theo từng năm, từng tháng, từng ngày. Thậm chí thỉnh thoảng tôi còn cảm giác mình đang già đi theo từng giờ. Và đáng sợ thay, đó là sự thật - Lắng Nghe Gió Hát (nguyễn hồng anh dịch)”

Facts
Book:Hear the Wind Sing
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“Thỉnh thoảng tôi có hay nói dối. Lần cuối tôi nói dối là hồi năm ngoái. Nói dối là một việc rất đáng ghét. Có thể nói, dối trá và im lặng là hai tội ác khủng khiếp đang hoành hoành tràn lan trong xã hội con người hiện đại. Thực tế chúng ta rất hay nói dối, và liên tục im lặng. Tuy nhiên, nếu chúng ta nói quanh năm, và giả sử chỉ toàn nói sự thật, thì có lẽ giá trị của sự thật cũng sẽ chẳng còn - Haruki Murakami, Lắng Nghe Gió Hát ( Nguyễn Hồng Anh dịch )”

Facts
Book:Hear the Wind Sing
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“Forget about them. If you don't feel like going to school, don't. Don't force yourself. School can be a real nightmare. I know. You have these brown-nosing idiots for classmates and these teachers who act like they own the world. Eighty percent of them are deadbeats or sadists, or both. Plus all those ridiculous rules. The whole system's designed to crush you, and so the goodie-goodies with no imagination get good grades. I bet that hasn't changed a bit.”

HumorSchool
Book:Dance Dance Dance
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“I never had what it takes to make a first-rate anything.' 'That's wrong,' she declared. 'Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it?' But school doesn't know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It's no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down.”

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Book:Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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“No se debe oponer resistencia a la corriente: hay que ir hacia arriba cuando hay que ir hacia arriba, y hacia abajo cuando hay que ir hacia abajo. Cuando debas ir hacia arriba, busca la torre más alta y sube hasta la cúspide. Cuando debas ir hacia abajo, busca el pozo más profundo y desciende hasta el fondo. Cuando no haya corriente, quédate inmóvil. Si te opones a la corriente todo se seca, el mundo se ve envuelto por las tinieblas. "Yo soy yo, él es yo, atardecer de otoño" Cuando renuncias a mi, yo existo.”

Inspirational Quotes
Book:The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
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“I must be in love with this woman, Sumire realized with a start. No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. This current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever.”

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Book:Sputnik Sweetheart
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“But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing? Who knows? Maybe that was 'despair.' What Turgenev called 'disillusionment.' Or Dostoyevsky, 'hell.' Or Somerset Maugham, 'reality.' Whatever the label, I figured it was me.”

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Book:Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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“Los pensamientos que acuden a mi mente cuando corro se parecen a las nubes del cielo. Nubes de diversas formas y tamaños. Nubes que vienen y se van. Pero el cielo siempre es el cielo. Las nubes son sólo meras invitadas. Algo que pasa de largo y se dispersa. Y sólo queda el cielo. El cielo es algo que, al tiempo que existe, no existe. Algo material y a la vez, inmaterial. Y a nosotros no nos queda sino aceptar ka existencia de ese inmenso recipiente tal cual es e intentar ir asimilándolo.”

Inspirational Quotes
Book:What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
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“In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevksy depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.”

EvilBalanceGoodHaruki MurakamiYin And Yang1q84
Book:1Q84
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“In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was teh way of the world that Dostoevksy depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.”

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Book:1Q84
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“I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal. College transported me to a new town, where I tried, one more time, to reinvent myself. Becoming someone new, I could correct the errors of my past. At first I was optimistic: I could pull it off. But in the end, no matter where I went, I could never change. Over and over I made the same mistake, hurt other people, and hurt myself in the bargain. Just after I turned twenty, this thought hit me: Maybe I've lost the chance to ever be a decent human being. The mistakes I'd committed—maybe they were part of my very makeup, an inescapable part of my being. I'd hit rock bottom, and I knew it.”

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Book:South of the Border, West of the Sun
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“I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.”

EvilNovelPsychologyIntrospectionGood IntentionsModernism
Book:South of the Border, West of the Sun
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“I'm tired of living in hatred and resentment. I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself. No, I'm not blaming you for this. Come to think of it, you may be such a victim. You probably don't know how to love yourself. Am I wrong about that?”

InspirationalSadnessLonelinessSelf LoveSadLonelyIntrovertIntrovert QuotesRelateable
Book:1Q84
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“Le mal du plays.” The quiet, melancholy music gradually gave shape to the undefined sadness enveloping his heart, as if countless microscopic bits of pollen adhered to an invisible being concealed in the air, ultimately revealing, slowly and silently, its shape. This time the being took on the shape of Sara—Sara in her mint-green short-sleeved dress. The ache in his heart returned. Not an intense pain, but the memory of intense pain. What did you expect? Tsukuru asked himself. A basically empty vessel has become empty once again. Who can you complain to about that? People come to him, discover how empty he is, and leave. What’s left is an empty, perhaps even emptier, Tsukuru Tazaki, all alone. Isn’t that all there is to it?”

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Book:Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
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“Este es todavía mi corazón, por muy hueco que esté. Si bien de forma tenue, en él aún permanece el calor humano de la gente. Algunos recuerdos personales esperan calladamente a que la marea suba, como algas enredadas en una estaca clavada en la orilla. Si pudiesen cortar, de algunos pensamientos manaría sangre roja. Todavía me puedo permitir que mi corazón vague errante hacia algún lugar imposible.”

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Book:Hombres sin mujeres
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“She’s got to be a ghost. First of all, she’s just too beautiful. Her features are gorgeous, but it’s not only that. She’s so perfect I know she can’t be real. She’s like a person who stepped right out of a dream. The purity of her beauty gives me a feeling close to sadness –a very natural feeling, though one that only something extraordinary could produce.”

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Book:Kafka on the Shore
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“Szerettem volna hangosan elsírni magam, de minek. Könnyeket ejteni - túl öreg és tapasztalt voltam én már ahhoz. Van a világon olyan bánat is, amit nem lehet megsiratni. Az a fajta, amit senkinek se lehet elmondani, s ha mégis, akkor sem értik meg. Ez a szomorúság megváltoztathatatlan, csendben megüli a szívet, felhalmozódik, mint a hó szélcsendes éjszakákon.”

Sadness
Book:Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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“They dig holes from time to time,' the Colonel explains. 'It is probably for them what chess is for me. It has no special meaning, does not transport them anywhere. All of us dig at our own pure holes. We have nothing to achieve by our activities, nowhere to get to. Is there not something marvelous about this? We hurt no one and no one gets hurt. No victory, no defeat.”

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Book:Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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“Can I be honest with you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I mean, really, really, really honest? Sometimes I get sooo scared! I'll wake up in the middle of the night all alone, hundreds of miles away from anybody, and it's pitch dark, and I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen to me in the future, and I get so scared I want to scream. Does that happen to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? When it happens, I try to remind myself that I am connected to others - other things and other people.”

PeopleFearConnection
Book:The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
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“Don’t you see? You and he might never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you have to see there’s a huge possibility you’ll never be able to meet him again. And even if you do meet, he might already be married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isn’t that so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with the one person you love in all the world. Don’t you find that scary?”

PeopleLoveLifeDistances
Book:1Q84
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