30 Haruki Murakami Quotes That Will Make You See The Beauty Around You

Here are 30 incredible quotes picked from Murakami’s works ranging from short stories to full-on novels.
Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
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.
Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.
No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.
Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads – at least that’s where I imagine it – there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.
Listen up – there’s no war that will end all wars.
Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.
Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.
Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.
Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time.
Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.
Even if we could turn back, we’d probably never end up where we started.
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Shutterstock
Life is not like water. Things in life don’t necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.
You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you.
Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.
What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.
People’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.
If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.
No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That’s all.
Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt.
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.
Chance encounters are what keep us going.
The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.
Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.
What we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with.
No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.
Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.
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