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I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.

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
World
Face
Twinge
Faces
Tremendously
Moving
Slightest
Earth
Disappear
Without
Complicated
Thing
Needed
Things
Sure
Would
Clear

More quotes by Haruki Murakami

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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.
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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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All over the world people have developed their own ideas about what's right and wrong in life, but so long as you aren't harming others or the Earth, it's your choice when you decide how you want to live your life - Yours and yours alone. Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with.
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I am nothing. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.
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As long as there's such a thing as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later.
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it occurred to me what a simple thing reality is, how easy it is to make it work. It's just reality. Just housework. Just a home. Like running a simple machine. Once you learn to run it, it's just a matter of repetition. You push this button and pull that lever. You adjust a gauge, put on the lid, set the timer. The same thing, over and over.
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Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person’s heart and dissolve it.
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Once thing goes wrong, then the whole house of cards collapses. And there's no way you can extricate yourself. Until someone comes along to drag you out.
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As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the way it all changed. Living turned me into nothing.
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Passion can’t sustain itself forever.
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So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Watanabe: Wow, and did your search pay off? M: That's the hard part. I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough.
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Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from.
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Everybody has to start somewhere. You have your whole future ahead of you. Perfection doesn't happen right away.
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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.
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His heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small restless body.
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But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abyss of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it.
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Mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances.
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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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So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises. And in the end, they all just vanish.
Haruki Murakami
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People need routines. It's like a theme in music. But it also restrictsyour thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic.
Haruki Murakami