Quotessence
Home / Authors / Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

Famous Haruki Murakami Quotes

“Eğer istersek, varsayımlar alanında dilediğimiz kadar at koşturabiliriz. Başıboş bir ilkbahar rüzgarının savurduğu kanatlı bir tohum gibi köksüz. Öte yandan da, aynı zamanda, rastlantı diye bir şeyin varlığını yadsıyabilir, bilmezden gelebiliriz. Olan olmuştur, olacak olan da besbelli olacaktır, işte böyle, sürüp gidebilir. Başka bir deyimle, aramızdaki "her şey" ile önümüzdeki "sıfır" arasında sıkıştırılmış olduğumuzdan, bizimkisi, içinde ne rastlantıya ne olanağa yer verilen, geçici bir varoluştur.”

“It was a cruel world though. More than half of all children died before they could reach maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like flies from polio and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably weren't many people who lived past forty. Women bore so many children, they became toothless old hags by the time they were in their thirties. People often had to resort to violence to survive. Tiny children were forced to do such heavy labor that their bones became deformed, and little girls were forced to become prostitutes on a daily basis. Little boys too, I suspect. Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full of cripples and beggars and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at the moon with deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of Dowland.”

“Quizá tampoco pueda decirse que soy un tipo corriente, pero raro no soy. Soy una persona extremadamente cabal, a mi manera. Muy directa. Directa como una flecha. Soy yo mismo de un modo sumamente natural e inevitable. Dado que es un hecho evidente, no me importa demasiado lo que los demás piensen de mí. La manera en que los demás me ven no me atañe. Más bien, eso es algo que sólo les atañe a ellos”

“I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. 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-centred, 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.”

“There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail, the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared, I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.”

“Just as each person has certain idiosyncracies in the way he or she walks, people have idiosyncracies in the way they think and feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it doesn’t happen overnight, and if you try to force the issue in one case, something else might go funny. He gave me a very simplified explanation, of course, and it’s just one small part of the problems we have, but I think I understand what he was trying to say. It may well be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities. Unable to find a place inside ourselves for the very real pain and suffering that these deformities cause, we come here to get away from such things. As long as we are here, we can get by without hurting others or being hurt by them because we know that we are “deformed.” That’s what distinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their lives there unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours the deformities themselves are a precondition. Just as Indians wear feathers on their heads to show which tribes they belong to, we wear our deformities in the open. And we live quietly so as not to hurt one another.”

“In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion,'" she repeats, making sure of it. If she had paper and pencil, it wouldn't surprise me if she wrote it down. "So what does that really mean? In simple terms." I think it over. It takes me a while to gather my thoughts, but she waits patiently. "I think it means," I say, "that chance encounters are what keep us going. In simple terms.”

“I put my arm around her. You put your arm around her. She leans against you. And a long spell of time passes. "Did you know that I did this exact same thing a long time ago? Right in this same spot?" "I know," you tell her. "How do you know that?' Miss Saeki asks, and looks you in the eyes. "I was there then." "Blowing up bridges?" "Yes, I was there, blowing up bridges." "Metaphorically." "Of course." You hold her in your arms, draw her close, kiss her. You can feel the strength deserting her body. "We're all dreaming, aren't we?" she says. All of us are dreaming. "Why did you have to die?" "I couldn't help it," you reply. Together you walk along the beach back to the library. You turn off the light in your room, draw the curtains, and without another word climb into bed and make love. Pretty much the same sort of lovemaking as the night before. But with two differences. After sex, she starts to cry. That's one. She buries her face in the pillow and silently weeps. You don't know what to do. You gently lay a hand on her bare shoulder. You know you should say something, but don't have any idea what. Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark bottom of a volcanic lake. And this time as she leaves you can hear the engine of her car. That's number two. She starts the engine, turns it off for a time, like she's thinking about something, then turns the key again and drives out of the parking lot. That blank, silent interval between leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long, long time. Finally it's a part of you. She leaves behind a damp pillow, wet with her tears. You touch the warmth with your hand and watch the sky outside gradually lighten. Far away a crow caws. The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those details of the real, there are dreams. And everyone's living in them.”

“Hay una realidad que demuestra la verdad de un hecho. Porque nuestra memoria y nuestros sentidos son demasiado inseguros, demasiado parciales. Incluso podemos afirmar que muchas veces es imposible discernir hasta qué punto un hecho que creemos percibir es real y a partir de qué punto sólo creemos que lo es. Así que para preservar la realidad como tal, necesitamos otra realidad -una realidad colindante- que la relativice. Pero, a su vez, esta realidad colindante necesita una base para relativizarse a sí misma. Es decir, que hay otra realidad colindante que demuestra, a su vez, que ésta es real. Y esta cadena se extiende indefinidamente dentro de nuestra conciencia y, en un cierto sentido, puede afirmarse que es a través de esta sucesión, a través de la conservación de esta cadena, como adquirimos conciencia de nuestra existencia misma. Pero si esta cadena, casualmente, se rompe, quedamos desconcertados. ¿La realidad está al otro lado del eslabón roto? ¿Está a este lado?”

“Because memory and feeling are so uncertain, so subjective, we always rely on some reality - let's call it an alternate reality - to prove events to be true. To what extent the facts we take to be true really are, and to what extent they are facts merely because we call them so, such a distinction cannot be made. Therefore, in order to recognize a reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the former. But this second reality requires a third as a basis. An infinite chain is created in our consciousness, and maintaining it creates the impression that we exist. However, something may happen that breaks this chain and then we feel lost. What's real? Is reality on this side of the broken chain or on the other?”