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Haruki Murakami Quotes

Browse 133 quotes about Haruki Murakami.

Haruki Murakami Quotes

“Yo lo sabía, sabía que ella me había cogido la mano de una manera espontánea, pero que, en realidad, lo había hecho porque deseaba hacerlo. Aún hoy recuerdo el tacto de su mano aquel día. Es un tacto diferente a cualquier otro que haya experimentado después. Era simplemente la mano pequeña y cálida de una niña de doce años. Pero en aquellos cinco dedos y en aquella palma se concentraban, como en un catálogo, todas las cosas que yo quería saber, todas las cosas que tenía que saber. Y ella, al tomarme de la mano, me las enseñó. Me enseñó que en el mundo real existía un lugar como aquél. Durante diez segundos tuve la sensación de haberme convertido en un pajarillo perfecto. Surcaba el aire, sentía el viento. Desde las alturas, podía ver paisajes lejanos. Tan remotos que no era capaz de vislumbrar con claridad lo que había. Pero supe que existían. Y que algún día iba a visitarlos. Esa certeza me dejó sin aliento, me hizo estremecer.”

LiteraturaJapanese LiteratureHaruki MurakamiMagiaJaponLiteratura JaponesaHaruki Murakami World
Book:South of the Border, West of the Sun
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“Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still haven't answered me." I probably still haven't completely adapted to the world," I said after giving it some thought. "I don't know, I feel like this isn't the real world. The people, the scene: they just don't seem real to me." Midori rested an elbow on the bar and looked at me. "There was something like that in a Jim Morrison song, I'm pretty sure." People are strange when you're a stranger.”

Norwegian WoodHaruki Murakami
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“April ended and May came along, but May was even worse than April. In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass....but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind. At those times I would write to Naoko. In my letters to her, I would describe only things that were touching or pleasant or beautiful: the fragrance of grasses, the caress of a spring breeze, the light of the moon, a movie I'd seen, a song I liked, a book that had moved me. I myself would be comforted by letters like this when I would reread what I had written. And I would feel that the world I lived in was a wonderful one. I wrote any number of letters like this, but from Naoko or Reiko I heart nothing.”

Norwegian WoodHaruki Murakami
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“So I'm not crazy after all! I thought it looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a first grader or a concentration camp survivor. What's this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. Really.”

Norwegian WoodHaruki Murakami
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“I do need that time, though, for Naoko's face to appear. And as the years have passed, the time has grown longer. The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute-like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness. There is no way around it: my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko used to stand-ever more distant from the spot where my old self used to stand. And nothing but scenery, that view of the meadow in October, returns again and again to me like a symbolic scene in a movie. Each time is appears, it delivers a kick to some part of my mind. "Wake up," it says. "I'm still here. Wake up and think about it. Think about why I'm still here." The kicking never hurts me. There's no pain at all. Just a hollow sound that echoes with each kick. And even that is bound to fade one day. At the Hamburg airport, though, the kicks were longer and harder than usual. Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

Norwegian WoodHaruki Murakami
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“We couldn't bear to be apart. So if Kizuki had lived, I'm sure we would have been together, loving each other, and gradually growing unhappy." Unhappy? Why's that?" With her fingers, Naoko combed her hair back several times. She had taken her barrette off, which made the hair fall over her face when she dropped her head forward. Because we would have had to pay the world back what we owed it," she said, raising her eyes to mine. "The pain of growing up. We didn't pay when we should have, so now the bills are due. Which is why Kizuki did what he did, and why I'm here. We were like kids who grew up naked on a desert island. If we got hungry, we'd just pick a banana; if we got lonely, we'd go to sleep in each other's arms. But that kind of thing doesn't last forever. We grew up fast and had to enter society. Which is why you were so important to us. You were the link connecting us with the outside world. We were struggling through you to fit in with the outside world as best we could. In the end, it didn't work, of course." I nodded. I wouldn't want you to think that we were using you, though. Kizuki really loved you. It just so happened that our connection with you was our first connection with anyone else. And it still is. Kizuki may be dead, but you are still my only link with the outside world. And just as Kizuki loved you, I love you. We never meant to hurt you, but we probably did; we probably ended up making a deep wound in your heart. It never occurred to us that anything like that might happen.”

Norwegian WoodHaruki Murakami
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“Naoko stayed frozen in place, like a small nocturnal animal that has been lured out by the moonlight. The direction of the glow exaggerated the silhouette of her lips. Seeming utterly fragile and vulnerable, the silhouette pulsed almost imperceptibly with the beating of her heart or the motions of her inner heart, as if she were whispering soundless words to the darkness. I swallowed in hopes of easing my thirst, but in the stillness of the night, the sound I made was huge. As if this were a signal to her, Naoko stood and glided toward the head of the bed, gown rustling faintly. She knelt on the floor by my pillow, eyes fixed on mine. I stared back at her, but her eyes told me nothing. Strangely transparent, they seemed like windows to a world beyond, but however long I peered into their depths, there was nothing I could see. Our faces were no more than ten inches apart, but she was light-years away from me.”

Norwegian WoodHaruki Murakami
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“Where the road sloped upward beyond the trees, I sat and looked toward the building where Naoko lived. It was easy to tell which room was hers. All I had to do was find the one window toward the back where a faint light trembled. I focused on that point of light for a long, long time. It made me think of something like the final throb of a soul's dying embers. I wanted to cup my hands over what was left and keep it alive. I went on watching the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny light on the opposite shore night after night.”

Norwegian WoodHaruki Murakami
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“He wasn't so bad when the two of us came to see you, though. He was just his usual self." Because you were there," said Naoko. "He was always like that around you. He struggled to keep his weaknesses hidden. I'm sure he was very fond of you. He made a point of letting you see only his best side. He wasn't like that with me. He'd let his guard down. He could be really moody. One minute he'd be chattering away, and the next thing he'd be depressed. It happened all the time. He was like that from the time he was little. He did keep trying to change himself, to improve himself, though." Naoko recrossed her legs atop the sofa. He tried hard, but it didn't do any good, and that would make him really angry and sad. There was so much about him that was fine and beautiful, but he could never find the confidence he needed. "I've got to do that, I've got to change this," he was always thinking, right up to the end. Poor Kizuki!" Still though," I said, "if it's true that he was always struggling to show me his best side, I'd say he succeeded. His best side was all that I could see." Naoko smiled. "He'd be thrilled to hear you say that. You were his only friend.”

Norwegian WoodHaruki Murakami
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“She repeated what her mother had told me, that she had been moved when she heard me playing as she passed the house. She had seen me on the street a few times, too, and begun to worship me. She actually used that word: worship. It made me turn bright red. I mean, to be 'worshiped' by such a beautiful little doll of a girl! I don't think it was an absolute lie, though. I was in my thirties already, of course, and I could never be as beautiful and bright as she was, and I had no special talent, but I must have had something that drew her to me, something that was missing in her, I would guess. Which must have been what got her interested in my to begin with. I believe that now, looking back. And I'm not boasting.”

Norwegian WoodHaruki Murakami
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature, but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short. (...) If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That's the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that.”

ReadingLiteratureBooksNorwegian WoodHaruki MurakamiNagasawa
Book:Norwegian Wood
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“Era a típica paisagem universitária durante o intervalo do almoço. E, no entanto, ao observar aquela cena familiar, dei-me conta de uma coisa. Todas as pessoas, cada uma à sua maneira, pareciam felizes. Não saberia dizer se estavam realmente felizes da vida ou se não passava de uma encenação. Em todo o caso, naquele agradável início de tarde em finais de setembro, toda a gente parecia satisfeita, e isso fez com que me sentisse ainda mais solitário. Como se fosse eu o único a destoar na paisagem.”

Norwegian WoodHaruki MurakamiRomance Japonês
Book:Norwegian Wood
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