Quote

It's a dark, cool, quiet place. A basement in your soul. And that place can sometimes be dangerous to the human mind. I can open the door and enter that darkness, but I have to be very careful. I can find my story there. Then I bring that thing to the surface, into the real world.

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
Sometimes
Dark
Cool
Real
Story
Door
Thing
Place
Quiet
Mind
Stories
Darkness
Basement
World
Soul
Doors
Basements
Find
Dangerous
Enter
Human
Bring
Surface
Humans
Open
Careful

More quotes by Haruki Murakami

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I don’t know what it means to live.
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Never let the darkness or negativity outside affect your inner self. Just wait until morning comes and the bright light will drown out the darkness.
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Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.
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A man is like a two-story house. The first floor is equipped with an entrance and a living room. On the second floor is every family member's room. They enjoy listening to music and reading books. On the first underground floor is the ruin of people's memories. The room filled with darkness is the second underground floor.
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Nature is actually unnatural
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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.
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The passage of time will usually extract the venom of most things and render them harmless
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I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something.
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At least he never walked.
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You couldn’t begin to imagine who I am, where I’m going, or what I’m about to do, All of you are trapped here. You can’t go anywhere, forward or back. But I’m not like you. I have work to do. I have a mission to accomplish. And so, with your permission, I shall move ahead.
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I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I'm running? I don't have a clue.
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I just gave them a little scare. A touch of psychological terror. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, true terror is the kind that men feel towards their imagination. (from Super-frog Saves Tokyo)
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I want to believe you, but if that's true, I just don't get it. Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean, if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone?
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The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one’s eyes without seeing anything.
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Life is like a box of cookies.
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You know what girls are like. They turn twenty or twenty-one and all of a sudden they start having these concrete ideas. They get super realistic. And when that happens, everything that seemed so sweet and lovable about them begins to look ordinary and depressing.
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What I'd like to be is a unique writer who's different from everybody else. I want to be a writer who tells stories unlike other writers'.
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It's not right for one friend to do all the giving and the other to do all the taking: that's not real friendship.
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I've translated a lot of American literature into Japanese, and I think that what makes a good translator is, above all, a feel for language and also a great affection for the work you're translating. If one of those elements is missing the translation won't be worth much.
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