Haruki Murakami Quotes

No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.

Talent is nothing without focus and endurance.

If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.

Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they're also what tear you apart.

I can never forget how terrified I was that night, and whenever I remember it, this thought always springs to mind: that the most frightening thing in the world is our own self.

If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that’s easy too: focus — the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that you can’t accomplish anything of value.

It's pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy pride.

The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school.

I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.

Even now, my ideal for writing fiction is to put Dostoevsky and Chandler together in one book. That’s my goal.

[My wife] is my first reader, every time I write a book. I rely on her. She’s a kind of partner to me. It’s like Scott Fitzgerald—for him, Zelda was the first reader.

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer—it just happened. It’s a kind of gift, you know, from the heavens. So I think I should be very humble.

I don’t like the realistic style, myself. I prefer a more surrealistic style. But with Norwegian Wood, I made up my mind to write a hundred percent realistic novel. I needed that experience.

I have this strange feeling that I’m not myself anymore. It’s hard to put into words, but I guess it’s like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling.

Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.

Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time.

Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I’m told. It’s in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can’t trust anything they haven’t seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. So I chose to see. I chose to speak here rather than say nothing.