Quotes from 1Q84

Haruki Murakami ·  925 pages

Rating: (152.2K votes)


“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.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“Even if we could turn back, we'd probably never end up where we started.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84



“It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“Find me now. Before someone else does.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84



“If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“In a sense, I'm the one who ruined me: I did it myself.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“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.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“As I see it, you are living with something that you keep hidden deep inside. Something heavy. I felt it from the first time I met you. You have a strong gaze, as if you have made up your mind about something. To tell you the truth, I myself carry such things around inside. Heavy things. That is how I can see it in you.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84



“Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“I've been lonely for so long. And I've been hurt so deeply. If only I could have met you again a long time ago, then I wouldn't have had to take all these detours to get here.'

Tengo shook his head. 'I don't think so. This way is just fine. This is exactly the right time. For both of us. [...] We needed that much time.... to understand how lonely we really were.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abbys of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84



“A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“Wasn't it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core-- a tiny flame to cup one's hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84



“Please remember: things are not what they seem.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It's a miracle, a cosmic miracle.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84


“Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead become angry—at someone else or at herself—which meant that it was rare for her to shed tears.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84



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About the author

Haruki Murakami
Born place: in Kyoto, Japan
Born date January 12, 1949
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Popular quotes

“Shahrzad,

I've failed you several times. But there was one moment I failed you beyond measure. It was the day we met. The moment I took your hand and you looked at me, with the glory of hate in your eyes. I should have sent you home to your family. But I didn't. There was honesty in your hatred.Fearlessness in your pain.In your honesty, I saw a reflection of myself.Or rather, of the man I longed to be. So I failed you. I didn't stay away.Then later, I thought if I had answers, it would be enough. I would no longer care. You would not matter. So I continued failing you. Continued wanting more. And now I can't find the words to say what must be said. To convey to you the least of what I owe. When I think of you, I can't find the air to breathe. And now, though you are gone, there is no pain or fear. All I am left with is gratitude.
When I was a boy, my mother would tell me that one of the best things in life is the knowledge that your story isn't over yet. Our story may have come to a close, but your story is still yet to be told. Make it a story worthy of you.
I failed you in one last thing. Here is my chance to rectify it. It was never because I didn't feel it. It was because I swore I would never say it, and a man is nothing if he can't keep his promises.
So I write it in the sky-
I love you, a thousand times over. And I will never apologize for it.
Khalid”
― Renee Ahdieh, quote from The Wrath and the Dawn


“I've liked you better when Katsa's around,' Giddon said. 'She's so rotten to me that you seem positively pleasant in contrast.”
― Kristin Cashore, quote from Bitterblue


“Children were meant to be gifts. The physical manifestation of love between a man and a woman. And for that love, all manner of sacrifice could be borne.”
― Steven Erikson, quote from Memories of Ice


“All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Island


“Meditation,” said his teacher, “hasn’t got a damn thing to do with anything, ‘cause all it has to do with is nothing. Nothingness. Okay? It doesn’t develop the mind, it dissolves the mind. Self-improvement? Forget it, baby. It erases the self. Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass. What good is it? Good for nothing. Excellent for nothing. Yes, Lord, but when you get down to nothing, you get down to ultimate reality. It’s then and exactly then that you’re sensing the true nature of the universe, you’re linked up with the absolute Absolute, son, and unless you’re content with blowing smoke up your butt all your life, that there’s the only place to be.”
― Tom Robbins, quote from Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates


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