Quote

Since I'm a novelist I'm the opposite of you - I believe that what's most important is what cannot be measured. I'm not denying your way of thinking, but the greater part of people's lives consist of things that are unmeasurable, and trying to change all these to something measurable is realistically impossible.

Haruki Murakami

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Change
Opposite
Important
Opposites
Measurable
Trying
Impossible
Realistically
Something
Since
Consist
Believe
Greater
Denying
Way
Lives
Novelist
Things
Cannot
Measured
Thinking
Part
Novelists

More quotes by Haruki Murakami

Image
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.
Haruki Murakami
Image
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?
Haruki Murakami
Image
When I'm running I don't have to talk to anybody and don't have to listen to anybody. This is a part of my day I can't do without.
Haruki Murakami
Image
I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you'd quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.
Haruki Murakami
Image
It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck.
Haruki Murakami
Image
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!
Haruki Murakami
Image
I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don’t know, and I give up thinking about it.
Haruki Murakami
Image
You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.
Haruki Murakami
Image
When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It's like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.
Haruki Murakami
Image
Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work.
Haruki Murakami
Image
The grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls.
Haruki Murakami
Image
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
Image
Understanding' is merely the sum total of our misunderstandings.
Haruki Murakami
Image
You have to make an effort to always look at the good side, always think about the good things. Then you've got nothing to be afraid of. If something bad comes up, you do more thinking at that point.
Haruki Murakami
Image
What would tomorrow bring? I wondered. Both hands on the wheel, I closed my eyes. I didn’t feel like I was in my own body my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing. What would become of me tomorrow I did not know.
Haruki Murakami
Image
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.
Haruki Murakami
Image
The whole terrible fight occured in the area of imagination. That is the precise location of our battlefield. It is there, that we experience our victories and defeats.
Haruki Murakami
Image
Irrepressible curiosity vied with an instinctive fear.
Haruki Murakami
Image
An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind. .... Something incredibly important - .. - had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence
Haruki Murakami
Image
Mediocrity's like a spot on a shirt—it never comes off.
Haruki Murakami