Haruki Murakami · 400 pages
Rating: (83.7K votes)
“two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Everyone may be ordinary, but they're not normal.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in fight, searching the skies for dreams.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“I never trust people with no appetite. It's like they're always holding something back on you.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but loose you.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“You got to know your limits. Once is enough, but you got to learn. A little caution never hurt anyone. A good woodsman has only one scar on him. No more, no less.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Genius or fool, you don't live in the world alone. You can hide underground or you can build a wall around yourself, but somebody's going to come along and screw up the works.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“You're wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this."
"I believe you," she whispers after a moment. "Please find my mind.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“I wasn't particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don't have to die the next.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“It's like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Huge organizations and me don't get along. They're too inflexible, waste too much time, and have too many stupid people.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“But didn't you say you were satisfied with your life?"
"Word games," I dismissed. "Every army needs a flag.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“That's wrong," she declared. "Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it? But school doesn't know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It's no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“How can the mind be so imperfect?" she says with a smile.
I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose.
"It may well be imperfect," I say, "but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow."
"Where do the lead?"
"To oneself," I answer. "That's where the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere."
I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall.
"Not one thing is your fault," I comfort her.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in. So much so, we can't even tell whether our experiences belong to time or to the world of physical things.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Haruki Murakami
Born place: in Kyoto, Japan
Born date January 12, 1949
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“What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated idea
into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve certainly learned something about it yourself. The teacher usually learns more than the pupil. Isn’t that true?”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
“She fought him by reminding herself what her father had said to Emil Hesping—that they lived in a country where believing had taken the place of knowing.”
― Ursula Hegi, quote from Stones from the River
“If I only have ten minutes, Sam, this is what I want to say. You're not the best of us. You're more than that. You're better than all of us. If I only have ten minutes, I would tell you to go out there and live. I'd say...please take your guitar and sing your songs to as many people as you can. Please fold a thousand more of those damn birds of yours. Please kiss that girl a million times.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from Forever
“The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold. But in my corner of the country, I'm trying to nail things down. I don't want to live in Victor's jungle, even if it did eventually devour him. I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Storm Front
“Mencheres dropped his hands from my shoulders. “You know that’s what he wants. He’ll want to trade, you for her.”
“Then I’ll do it,” I said.
Bones’s grip on me turned to steel. “No, you won’t.”
― Jeaniene Frost, quote from Destined for an Early Grave
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