Haruki Murakami

The pillow smells like the sunlight, a precious smell.

Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.

A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do but what he should do.

The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things cant be learned at school.

Never let the darkness or negativity outside affect your inner self. Just wait until morning comes and the bright light will drown out the darkness.

The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.

Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

I have always liked running, so it wasn't particularly difficult to make it a habit. All you need is a pair of running shoes and you can do it anywhere. It does not require anybody to do it with, and so I found the sport perfectly fits me as a person who tends to be independent and individualistic.

Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly and if possible sincerely.

Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.

I don't know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

I'm a writer. I don't support any war. That's my principle.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I'm 100 percent fiction writer... I don't want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don't state my political messages to anybody.

It's true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual.

I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing.

People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

Young people these days don't trust anything at all. They want to be free.

Lifes no piece of cake mind you but the recipes my own to fool with.

The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening ones eyes without seeing anything.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don't think so... I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

I didn't read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature, I just wanted to do something else.

My heroes don't have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don't know how, so they talk to themselves.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

I was living for one thing only and that was to confirm my own lack of feeling.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

I've run the Boston Marathon 6 times before. I think the best aspects of the marathon are the beautiful changes of the scenery along the route and the warmth of the people's support. I feel happier every time I enter this marathon.

Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.

In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness.

When people tell a lie about something they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. Mythomania is the word for it.

Your work should be an act of love not a marriage of convenience.

I've been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It's natural.

I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run.

Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.

Whiskey like a beautiful woman demands appreciation. You gaze first then its time to drink.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

I don't want to express my opinion about actual politics, because if I do, I have to be responsible for my decision.

All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.

Many people tell me that they don 't know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That's good.

People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they'll go to any length to live longer. But don't think that's the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.

I wonder what ants do on rainy days

Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life.

Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It's a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it's not imagination. It's just a way of watching.

I don't get bored.

Mediocrity's like a spot on a shirt—it never comes off.

Cell phones are so convenient that theyre an inconvenience.

No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning.

I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm just a guy who can write.

Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I dont know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless and that feeling is my prision. I entered of my own free will I locked the door and I threw away the key.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

What gave money its true meaning was its dark night namelessness its breathtaking interchangeability.

I'm kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I'm always hot.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don't know what's going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don't know at all what you're going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you're a kid and you're reading stories.

I'd made it back to the land of the living. No matter how boring or mediocre a world it might be, this was it.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues.

Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.

Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world?

Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.

Most near-future fictions are boring. It's always dark and always raining, and people are so unhappy.

I'm not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years.

It is sometimes necessary for each person. Fill up with delicious food, get drunk, sing loudly and chat frivolously.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Memories are what warm you up inside. But they're also what tear you apart.

An expectation was there, mixed in with so many other emotions, excitement, resignation, hesitation, confusion, fear that would well up then wither on the vine. You're optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does.

If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.

Maybe its just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows maybe even tomorrow.

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.

Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.

Team sports aren't my thing. I find it easier to pick something up if I can do it at my own speed. And you don't need a partner to go running, you don't need a particular place, like in tennis, just a pair of trainers.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

I used to run a full marathon in three hours and 25 or 26 minutes. Not any more.

No matter how far you travel you can never get away from yourself.

Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

You know, if you are kind of rich, the best thing is that you don't have to think about money. The best thing you can buy with money is freedom, time. I don't know how much I earn a year. I have no idea. I don't know how much I pay in taxes.

It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.

It's physical. If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they're also what tear you apart.

You know what I'd really like to do the most right now? Climb up to the top of some high place like the pyramids. The highest place I can find. Where you can see forever. Stand on the very top, look all around the world, see all the scenery, and see with my own eyes what's been lost from the world.

We're all kind of weird and twisted and drowning

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

His heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small restless body.

I could have been a cult writer if I'd kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.

Reaching the finish line, never walking, and enjoying the race. These three, in this order, are my goals.

Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked in filthy air all the time late into the night. I was very excited when I started making a living out of my writing, and I decided, 'I will live in nothing but an absolutely healthy way.'