Quote

Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves.

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
Taken
Sustain
Ability
Collectives
Individual
Linked
History
Collective
True
Memory
Two
Lose
Rewritten
Self
Memories
Intimately
Made
Loses
Selves

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Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.
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You're walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, 'Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?' So you and the bear spend the whole day in each other's arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh?
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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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In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.
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Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.
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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.
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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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Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.
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No matter where i go, i still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but i'm still the same incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that i can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as i'll come to defining myself.
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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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What do we talk about? Just ordinary things. What happened today, or books we've read, or tomorrow's weather, you know. Don't tell me you're wondering if people jump to their feet and shout stuff like 'It'll rain tomorrow if a polar bear eats the stars tonight!
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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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Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams.
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When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
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Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.
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Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.
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No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don't like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I can.
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And when you come back to Japan next summer, let's have that date or whatever you want to call it. We can go to the zoo or the botanical garden or the aquarium, and then we'll have the most politically correct and scrumptious omelets we can find.
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Life is like a box of cookies.
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Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts.
Haruki Murakami