Quote

People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you might strike out, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That's what can move the world. That's art.

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
Might
Nine
Something
Ten
Time
Move
World
Special
Bowled
People
Times
Tenth
Moving
Peak
Experience
Strike
Art
Strikes

More quotes by Haruki Murakami

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That's wrong, she declared. Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it? But school doesn't know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It's no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down.
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No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.
Haruki Murakami
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I’ve built a wall around me, never letting anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself
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I write my novels personally, desperately and non-negligently. When I write my novels, I think about my novels only, and never do other works.
Haruki Murakami
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You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.
Haruki Murakami
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Once a guy starts using a wig, he has to keep using one. It's, like, his fate. That's why wig makers make such huge profits. I hate to say it, but they're like drug dealers.
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What's nurtured slowly grows well.
Haruki Murakami
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But knowing what I don’t want to do doesn’t help me figure out what I do want to do. I could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I don’t have an image of the one thing I really want to do. That’s my problem now. I can’t find the image.
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Why do I act like this, agreeing when I really disagree, letting people force me to do things I don't want to do?
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I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else.
Haruki Murakami
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Then when dusk began to settle he would retrace his steps, back to his own world. And on the way home, a loneliness would always claim his heart. He could never quite get a grip on what it was. It just seemed that whatever lay waiting out there was all too vast, too overwhelming for him to possibly ever make a dent in.
Haruki Murakami
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He was silent for thirty seconds, maybe a minute. I uncrossed my legs under the table and wondered if this was the right moment to leave. It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the right point in a conversation to say goodbye.
Haruki Murakami
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Give yourself five minutes to consider how you can turn a miserable situation to your benefit and that light bulb is going to click on.
Haruki Murakami
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What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.
Haruki Murakami
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We're all kind of weird and twisted and drowning.
Haruki Murakami
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Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.
Haruki Murakami
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In terms of evolutionary history, it was only yesterday that men learned to walk around on two legs and get in trouble thinking complicated thoughts. So don't worry, you'll burn out.
Haruki Murakami
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I wonder what ants do on rainy days?
Haruki Murakami
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That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive.
Haruki Murakami
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Our faces were no more than ten inches apart but she was lightyears away from me.
Haruki Murakami