Haruki Murakami (January 12, 1949) is considered by some as one of the world’s greatest living novelists. The Japanese contemporary writer has received a wide array of awards for works such as Norwegian Wood , Kafka on the Shore and A Wild Sheep Chase.
1.”Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”
2.”I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do.”
3.”No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves.”
4.”A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.”
5.”Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”
6.”If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
7.”If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
8.”Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they’re also what tear you apart.”
9.”The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”
10.”Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
11.”Money had no name of course. And if it did have a name, it would no longer be money. What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.”
12.”There are ways of dying that don’t end in funerals. Types of death you can’t smell.”
13.”I used to think the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time … but it’s not like that. It happens overnight.”
14.”When there’s nothing to do, you do nothing slowly and intently.”
15.”For a while” is a phrase whose length can’t be measured. At least by the person who’s waiting.”
16.”When there’s nothing to do, you do nothing slowly and intently.”
17.”Numbers aren’t the important thing … what matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. When you do that, it is always the first time and the last.”
18.”To sleep with a woman: it can seem of the utmost importance in your mind, or then again it can seem like nothing much at all. Which only goes to say that there’s sex as therapy (self-therapy, that is) and there’s sex as pastime.”
19.”Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.”
20.”Even castles in the sky can do with a fresh coat of paint.”
21.”If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.”
22.”If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets”
23.”I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”