Haruki Murakami · 333 pages
Rating: (25.4K votes)
“She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn't control you--you should control them. ”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“These days I just can't seem to say what I mean [...]. I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“There are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. Types of death you can't smell.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“Somewhere in his body--perhaps in the marrow of his bones--he would continue to feel her absence.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“I may be the type who manages to grab all the pointless things in life but lets the really important things slip away.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“What matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. When you do that, it is always the first time and the last.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“And you know, this thought crossed my mind at the time: maybe chance is a pretty common thing after all. Those kinds of coincidences are happening all around us, all the time, but most of them don't attract our attention and we just let them go by. It's like fireworks in the daytime. You might hear a faint sound, but even if you look up at the sky you can't see a thing. But if we're really hoping something may come true it may become visible, like a message rising to the surface. Then we're able to make it out clearly, decipher what it means. And seeing it before us we're surprised and wonder at how strange things like this can happen. Even though there's nothing strange about it.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“There are three ways you can get along with a girl: one, shut up and listen to what she has to say; two, tell her you like what she's wearing; and three, treat her to really good food...If you do all that and still don't get the results you want, better give up.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“What I saw wasn't a ghost. It was simply--myself. 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. What do you think?”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“I'm in no position to hand down any advice," he said, "but there's a rule I follow when I don't know what to do."
"A rule?"
"If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn't, go for the one without form. That's my rule. Whenever I run into a wall I follow that rule, and it always works out. Even if it's hard going at the time.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“He was silent for thirty seconds, maybe a minute. I uncrossed my legs under the table and wondered if this was the right moment to leave. It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the right point in a conversation to say goodbye.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“These days I just can't seem to say what I mean,' she said. 'I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her...Do you know what I'm trying to say?' 'Everybody has that kind of feeling sometimes,' I said. 'You can't express yourself the way you want to, and it annoys you.' Obviously this wasn't what she wanted to hear.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“Your work should be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“You can see a person's whole life in the cancer they get.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us. If we were no longer here, words would lose their whole function. They would end up as words that are never spoken, and words that aren't spoken are no longer words.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“I don't think jealousy has much of a connection with real, objective conditions. Like if you're fortunate you're not jealous, but if life hasn't blessed you, you are jealous. Jealousy doesn't work that way. It's more like a tumor secretly growing inside us that gets bigger and bigger, beyond all reason. Even if you find out it's there, there's nothing you can do to stop it.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“Everybody has to start somewhere. You have your whole future ahead of you. Perfection doesn't happen right away.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“There were plenty of women around who dressed smartly, and plenty more who dressed to impress, but this girl was different. Totally different. She wore her clothing with such utter naturalness and grace that she could have been a bird that had wrapped itself in a special wind as it made ready to fly off to another world. He had never seen a woman who wore her clothes with such apparent joy. And the clothes themselves looked as if, in being draped on her body, they had won new life for themselves.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“ice contains no future , just the past, sealed away. As if they're alive, everything in the world is sealed up inside, clear and distinct. Ice can preserve all kinds of things that way- cleanly, clearly. That's the essence of ice, the role it plays.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“Far away, I could hear them lapping up my brains. Like Macbeth's witches, the three lithe cats surrounded my broken head, slurping up that thick soup inside. The tips of their rough tongues licked the soft folds of my mind. And with each lick my consciousness flickered like a flame and faded away.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.
Its only confusing if you believe it has to make sense.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Haruki Murakami
Born place: in Kyoto, Japan
Born date January 12, 1949
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“Stephen watched the packets of lives with their memories and loves go spinning and vomiting into the ground. Death had no meaning, but still the numbers of them went on and on and in that new infinity there was still horror.”
― Sebastian Faulks, quote from Birdsong
“This rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Tempest
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“steamy day, and though the windows of the oval study were open, the room was oppressively hot. “You know Captain Henry, of course, Admiral? His boy’s just gotten his wings at Pensacola.”
― Herman Wouk, quote from The Winds of War
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