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Haruki Murakami Quotes

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Famous Haruki Murakami Quotes

“Were the stars out when I left the house last evening? All I could remember was the couple in the Skyline listening to Duran Duran. Stars? Who remembers stars? Come to think of it, had I even looked up at the sky recently? Had the stars been wiped out of the sky three months ago, I wouldn't have known. The only things I noticed were silver bracelets on women's wrists and popsicle sticks in potted rubber plants. There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night. No car, no car stereo, no silver bracelets, no shuffling, no dark blue tweed suits. My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless—a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic. Indecipherable except to some machine. My first circuit must have been wearing thin. My real memories were receding into planar projection, the screen of consciousness losing all identity.”

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Book:Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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“Once she called to invite me to a concert of Liszt piano concertos. The soloist was a famous South American pianist. I cleared my schedule and went with her to the concert hall at Ueno Park. The performance was brilliant. The soloist's technique was outstanding, the music both delicate and deep, and the pianist's heated emotions were there for all to feel. Still, even with my eyes closed, the music didn't sweep me away. A thin curtain stood between myself and pianist, and no matter how much I might try, I couldn't get to the other side. When I told Shimamoto this after the concert, she agreed. "But what was wrong with the performance?" she asked. "I thought it was wonderful." "Don't you remember?" I said. "The record we used to listen to, at the end of the second movement there was this tiny scratch you could hear. Putchi! Putchi! Somehow, without that scratch, I can't get into the music!" Shimamoto laughed. "I wouldn't exactly call that art appreciation." "This has nothing to do with art. Let a bald vulture eat that up, for all I care. I don't care what anybody says; I like that scratch!" "Maybe you're right," she admitted. "But what's this about a bald vulture? Regular vultures I know about--they eat corpses. But bald vultures?" In the train on the way home, I explained the difference in great detail.The difference in where they are born, their call, their mating periods. "The bald vulture lives by devouring art. The regular vulture lives by devouring the corpses of unknown people. They're completely different." "You're a strange one!" She laughed. And there in the train seat, ever so slightly, she moved her shoulder to touch mine. The one and only time in the past two months our bodies touched.”

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Book:South of the Border, West of the Sun
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“- Чувал ли си за болестта сибирска треска? - Не. - Чела съм за нея преди доста време.. Но не помня заглавието на книгата. От сибирска треска боледуват предимно селяните в Сибир. Опитай се да си представиш следното: ти си селянин и живееш съвсем сам в дивата сибирска тайга. Ден след ден превиваш гръб над ралото, разораваш нивите си с пот на челото. Наоколо, докъдето ти стига погледът, няма нищо. Накъдето и да се обърнеш, виждаш само хоризонта - на север, на изток, на юг, на запад - все същото. И нищо друго. Сутрин слънцето изгрява и ти отиваш да работиш на полето. Когато застане над главата ти, значи е дошло време за обяд. Щом започне да клони към залез, се връщаш у дома да спиш..И това се повтаря ден след ден, година след година..Та, представи си, че ти си такъв селянин..Идва ден, когато нещо в теб умира..Нещо..Всеки ден виждаш как слънцето изгрява от изток, изминава своя път по небето, после залязва на запад и нещо в теб се прекършва и умира. Захвърляш плуга и с празна от мисли глава тръгваш на запад. На запад от слънцето. Вървиш ден след ден като луд - не ядеш, не пиеш, докато не паднеш мъртъв на земята. Това е сибирската треска - hysteria siberiana. Опитах се да си представя сибирски селянин, лежащ мъртъв на земята и попитах: - Но какво има там, на запад от слънцето? - Не знам. Може би нищо. А може и да има нещо. Във всеки случай е различно от онова, което е на юг от границата.”

AloneEmptiness SacrificeHysteria Siberiana
Book:South of the Border, West of the Sun
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“For me- and for everybody else, probably- this is my first experience growing old, and the emotions I'm having, too, are all first-time feelings. If it were something I'd experienced before, then I'd be able to understand it more clearly, but this is the first time, so I can't. For now all I can do is put off making any detailed judgments and accept things as they are. Just like I accept the sky, the clouds, and the river. And there's also something kind of comical about it all, something you don't want to discard completely.”

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Book:What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
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“You knew when you saw those eyes he was going to die soon. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest trace of what had once been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all the fixtures and fittings had been removed, awaiting its final demolition. Around the dry lips clumps of whiskers sprouted like weeds. So, I thought, even after so much of a man's life force has been lost, his beard continues to grow.”

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Book:Norwegian Wood
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“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”

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Book:The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
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“You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you'll expand the limits of what you're able to do. Almost imperceptibly you'll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner's physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee the results will come.”

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Book:What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
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“He longed for her more than he could say. It was a wonderful thing to be able to truly want someone like this –the feeling was so real, so overpowering. He hadn’t felt this way in ages. Maybe he never had before. Not that everything about it was wonderful: his chest ached, he found it hard to breathe, and a fear, a dark oscillation, had hold of him. But now even that kind of ache had become an important part of the affection he felt. He didn’t want to let that feeling slip from his grasp. Once lost, he might never happen across that warmth again. If he had to lose it, he would rather lose himself.”

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Book:Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
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“I felt guilty that I hadn't thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think of it this way: two and a half years have gone by since it happened, and Kizuki is still seventeen years old. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can't explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say.”

DeathDeath And DyingDeath Of A Loved One
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it’s true—all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom. The Australian Aborigines are the exception, though. They managed to maintain a fenceless civilization until the seventeenth century. They’re dyed-in-the-wool free. They go where they want, when they want, doing what they want. Their lives are a literal journey. Walkabout is a perfect metaphor for their lives. When the English came and built fences to pen in their cattle, the Aborigines couldn’t fathom it. And, ignorant to the end of the principle at work, they were classified as dangerous and antisocial and were driven away, to the outback. So I want you to be careful. The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself.”

Freedom
Book:Kafka on the Shore
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“One other thing I learned from working in a company was that the majority of people in the world have no problem following orders. They're actually happy to be told what to do. They might complain, but that's not how they really feel. They just grumble out of habit. If you told them to think for themselves, and make their own decisions and take responsibility for them, they'd be clueless.”

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Book:Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
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