Quotes from Norwegian Wood

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“What happens when people open their hearts?"
"They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment. ”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. ”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“Letters are just pieces of paper," I said. "Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“Only the Dead stay seventeen forever.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“I really like you, Midori. A lot.”
“How much is a lot?”
“Like a spring bear,” I said.
“A spring bear?” Midori looked up again. “What’s that all about? A spring bear.”
“You’re walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring, and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, “Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?’ So you and the bear cub spend the whole day in each other’s arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh?”
“Yeah. Really nice.”
“That’s how much I like you.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“What makes us the most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“Not that we were incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn't give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. The scenery was the last thing on my mind.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

Watanabe: Wow, and did your search pay off?

M: That's the hard part. I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“She's letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you're in big trouble.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty five days a year, I was still in elementary school at the time - fifth or sixth grade - but I made up my mind once and for all.”

“Wow,” I said. “Did the search pay off?”

“That’s the hard part,” said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. “I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfection. That makes it tough.”

“Waiting for the perfect love?”

“No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”

“I’m not sure that has anything to do with love,” I said with some amazement.

“It does,” she said. “You just don’t know it. There are time in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important.”

“Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?”

“Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. “Now I see, Midori. What a fool I have been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate Mousse? Cheesecake?”

“So then what?”

“So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.”

“Sounds crazy to me.”

“Well, to me, that’s what love is…”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“It's because of you when I'm in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live another good day.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“لا أحد يحب العزلة. أنا فقط أكره الخيبة”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

“Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It's like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. So stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they're supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norwegian Wood

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Popular quotes

“John Brooks.’ Immediately, I thought of the odds. First of just surviving in such a place, next of surviving and then becoming a cop. ‘Vertical ghettos, each one of them. Me and John used to say it was the only time when you had to take the elevator up when you were going to hell.’ I just nodded. This was out of my realm completely. ‘And that’s only if the elevators were working,’ he added. I realized that I never considered that Brooks might be a black man. There was no photo in the computer printouts and no reason to mention race in the stories. I had just assumed he was white and it was an assumption I would have to analyze later. At the moment, I was trying to figure out what Washington was trying to tell me by taking me here. Washington pulled into a lot next to one of the buildings. There were a couple of dumpsters coated with decades of graffiti slogans. There was a rusted basketball backboard but the rim was long gone. He put the car in park but left it running. I didn’t know if that was to keep the heat flowing or to allow us a quick getaway if needed. I saw a small group of teenagers in long coats, their faces as dark as the sky, scurry from the building closest to us, then cross a frozen courtyard and hustle into one of the other buildings. ‘At this point you’re wondering what the hell you’re doing here,’ Washington said then. ‘That’s okay, I understand. A white boy like you.’ Again I said nothing. I was letting him run out his line. ‘See that one, third on the right. That was our building. I was on fourteen with my grand-auntie and John lived with his mother on twelve, one below us. They didn’t have no thirteen, already enough bad luck ’round here. Neither of us had fathers. At least ones that showed up.’ I thought he wanted me to say something but I didn’t know what. I had no earthly idea what kind of struggle the two friends must have had to make it out of the tombstone of a building he had pointed at. I remained mute. ‘We were friends for life. Hell, he ended up marrying my first girlfriend, Edna. Then on the department, after we both made homicide and trained with senior detectives for a few years, we asked to be partnered. And damn, it got approved. Story about us in the”
― Michael Connelly, quote from The Poet

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― Jacqueline Winspear, quote from Maisie Dobbs

“Die unglaubliche Reise des Smithy Ide – Ron McLarty
Lieblingszitat:

“Lieber Smithy, das hier ist mein Brief an dich, aber ich werde ihn nicht abschicken. Ich schreibe am Fenster in meinem Zimmer, und das Fenster ist offen. Der Ahorn draußen in unserem Garten raschelt, und ich lasse es vom Wind zu dir tragen, denn er kann das, und ich glaube wirklich, dass Worte fliegen können.” S. 249”
― Ron McLarty, quote from The Memory of Running

“Meg and Belch only had eyes for each other. Not in the usual romantic sense.”
― Eoin Colfer, quote from The Wish List

“i usedta live in the world
really be in the world
free & sweet talkin
good mornin & thank-you & nice day
uh huh
i cant now
i cant be nice to nobody
nice is such a rip-off
regular beauty & a smile in the street
is just a set-up”
― Ntozake Shange, quote from for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

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