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What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.

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
Back
Going
Things
Retrieving
Returning
However
Lost

More quotes by Haruki Murakami

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With the advent of winter, her eyes seemed to take on a greater transparency, a transparency that lead nowhere. Occassionally, for no particular reason, Naoko would gaze into my eyes as if searching for something. Each time I was filled with odd sensations of lonliness and inadequecy.
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Our responsibility begins with our imagination.
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When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.
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What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real.
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In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness.
Haruki Murakami
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Maybe it's just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows — maybe even tomorrow.
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The facts and techniques or whatever they teach you in class isn't going to be veryuseful in the real world, that's for sure.
Haruki Murakami
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If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.
Haruki Murakami
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I saw that she was crying. Before I knew it, I was kissing her. Others on the platform were staring at us, but I didn't care about such things anymore. We were alive, she and I. And all we had to think about was continuing to live.
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Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep.
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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.
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Passion can’t sustain itself forever.
Haruki Murakami
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Adults need more complex narratives. They have their own narratives. The main characters are themselves.
Haruki Murakami
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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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As long as an individual's alive, he will undergo experience in some form or other, and those experiences are stored up instant by instant. To stop experiencin' is to die.
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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There has to be pain. That's the rule.
Haruki Murakami
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She was hearing everything that went on in his heart, like a person who can trace a map with his fingertip and conjure up vivid, living scenery.
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The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life—bigger and deeper than anything he had imagined. It changed its color and shape and expression according to time and place and weather. It aroused a deep sadness in his heart, and at the same time it brought his heart peace and comfort.
Haruki Murakami
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Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.
Haruki Murakami