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I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream - I was surprised to find it happening.

Haruki Murakami

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Haruki Murakami
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: January 12
Athletics Competitor
Essayist
Linguist
Novelist
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Kyōto
Murakami Haruki
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Kitchen
Dream
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Ten
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More quotes by Haruki Murakami

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She was, if anything, on the plain side, at least not the type to attract men wherever she went. But there was something in her face that was meant for me alone. Everytime we met, I took a good look at her. And loved what I saw.
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It was a strange feeling, like touching a void.
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It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.
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If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit.
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Still, in the end, we all die just the same.
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Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.
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Everything just blows me away.
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I didn't want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that's a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I'm proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.
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You always look so cool, like no matter what happens, it’s got nothing to do with you, but you’re not really like that. In your own way, you’re out there fighting as hard as you can, even if other people can’t tell by looking at you.
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...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.
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Fate seems to be taking me in some even stranger directions.
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I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt but I was wrong.
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When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. ‘Mythomania’ is the word for it.
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No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.
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As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.
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Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.
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I never could stand being forced to do something I didn't want to do at a time I didn't want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I'd give it everything I had.
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It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.
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It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.
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Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match.
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