Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Haruki Murakami

Quote by Haruki Murakami

“Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009)”

Quote by Haruki Murakami

Create image

Author

Haruki Murakami

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Haruki Murakami. more

You May Also Like

“Many of us want one of the other events: we want to be part of a political revolution, a scientific discovery, an artistic innovation, and - because our society tells us that this is the event that in the end makes up for all our misery - we want to fall deeply in love and stay so. Suffering, in turn, is not an even that any of us want. Unfortunately, it is probably the one that many of us are more likely to experience than any of the others. As tempting as it is to try to offer a more sanguine conclusion to the distilliation of ideas that this book has attempted to accomplish, I cannot end on a polite lie. I know that if falling in love is an event, losing that love is no less so.”

LoveSufferingEvent
Book:Distillations: Theory, Ethics, Affect
Create image

“Misophorism is the absolute reality that misathymia (which is Misery—which is Death—which is Truth) is everywhere, the ubiquitous constant—it is inescapable. Reality is naught but misathymia. It inheres within every facet of life. We must thus consider its avenues and disabuse ourselves of petty nothings, for if the ultimate goal of life is comfort and joy, it is ill-suited for existence, as all Life Forms must toil. A worm, with no cerebrations whatever, must, by its ingrained nature, suffer to survive, lest it starve or be devoured. Higher statures face the same. An ape; it must protect its territory lest it too starve or be maimed. What of their assailants? Has the Creator (whatever form it takes!) bequeathed to them unique ataraxy? The barbaric slaughter of prey betrays the starvation of the predator. Should it fail to nourish itself, desperation irrupts into its withering form, until, at last, it betakes itself to cannibalism. Nature’s brutality is manifest. No creature knows peace; fear inheres within each. And what of Man, the highest stature of all? Within him misathymia is inordinate. His intellect has rendered him beyond all other creatures, doubtless a bitter Curse. Consciousness educes the silent agony from within him, for when he finds shelter and nourishment, his mind ambles about, his atavistic nature befuddled with none to Kill and none to flee from. In this, greater forms of misery may be achieved. The Brutish Man cannot conceive of the miseries of homelessness, nor of the agonies of ostracization, of exile, of impoverishment. A man without the conception of wealth cannot comprehend the loss of it, nor the torment it educes. The Ancient Man cannot fathom the Array of New Horrors that assail him today. This betrays the cruelty of all things; life’s predilection for suffering is unquestionable. All Good exists to further life’s affinity for greater forms of horror. For this, Sane men have but one choice: to destroy oneself.”

PhilosophySufferingPessimismAgonyBrutalityNihilism
Book:The Misophorism Trilogy
Create image