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

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Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.
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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.
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Things may look different to you than they did before. I've had that experience myself. But don't let appearances fool you. There's only one reality.
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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.
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Sometimes when I'm with you, I remember things I lost when I was your age. Like I remember the sound of the rain and the smell of the wind.
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While they're still alive, people can become ghosts.
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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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Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion
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My face, my self, what would they mean to anybody? Just another stiff. So this self of mine passes some other's self on the street - what do we have to say to each other? Hey there! Hi ya!That's about it. Nobody raises a hand. No one turns around to take another look.
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No matter what form the relationship might take, he was the only person she could picture sharing her life with.
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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.
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What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus.
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People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream.
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My imagination is a kind of animal. So what I do is keep it alive.
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They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?
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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.
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But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.
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To know one’s own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one’s own face with one’s own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one’s reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all.
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Where I went in my travels, it's impossible for me to recall. I remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in which I traveled from place to place.
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