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Whenever I meet people for the first time, I get them to talk for ten minutes. Then I size them up from the exact opposite perspective of all they’ve told me. Do you think that’s crazy? “No,” I said, shaking my head, “I’d guess your method works quite well.

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
Firsts
Works
Opposites
Well
Minutes
Whenever
First
Told
Ten
Time
Crazy
Size
Think
Head
Method
Thinking
Quite
Guess
Shaking
People
Talk
Perspective
Exact
Wells
Meet
Opposite

More quotes by Haruki Murakami

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For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I'm still awake. I can continue yesterday's dream today, something you can't normally do in everyday life.
Haruki Murakami
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Far away, I could hear them lapping up my brains. Like Macbeth's witches, the three lithe cats surrounded my broken head, slurping up that thick soup inside. The tips of their rough tongues licked the soft folds of my mind. And with each lick my consciousness flickered like a flame and faded away.
Haruki Murakami
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Who can really distinguish between the sea and what's reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?
Haruki Murakami
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When I was fifteen, all I wanted was to go off to some other world, a place beyond anybody’s reach. A place beyond the flow of time.” - But there’s no place like that in this world. - Exactly. Which is why I’m living here, in this world where things are continually damaged, where the heart is fickle, where time flows past without a break.
Haruki Murakami
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The silence grew deeper, so deep that if you listened carefully you might very well catch the sound of the earth revolving on its axis.
Haruki Murakami
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Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another.
Haruki Murakami
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I don’t know, I don’t feel right unless I’ve got the sea and mountains nearby. People are mostly a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel’s always linked to the lay of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even.
Haruki Murakami
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You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.
Haruki Murakami
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I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don’t know, and I give up thinking about it.
Haruki Murakami
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Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.
Haruki Murakami
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I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn’t last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.
Haruki Murakami
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You said that the mind is like the wind but perhaps it is we who are like the wind Knowing nothing, simply blowing through. Never aging, never dying.
Haruki Murakami
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If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.
Haruki Murakami
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An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind. .... Something incredibly important - .. - had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence
Haruki Murakami
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I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.
Haruki Murakami
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Young people these days don't trust anything at all. They want to be free.
Haruki Murakami
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Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.
Haruki Murakami
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Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.
Haruki Murakami
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My grandpa always said asking a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime.
Haruki Murakami
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I get irritated, I get upset. Especially when I'm in a hurry. But I see it all as part of our training. To get irritated is to lose our way in life.
Haruki Murakami