"People don’t just die when their time comes. They gradually die away, from the inside."
– Haruki Murakami - 1Q84
"This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don’t get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can’t do anything, don’t get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it’s ready to come undone. You have to figure it’s going to be a long process and that you’ll work on things slowly, one at a time."
– Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
"‘But why should you be interested in me?’
‘Good question. I can’t explain it myself right this second. But maybe – just maybe – if we start getting together and talking, after a while something like Francis Lai’s soundtrack music will start playing in the background, and a whole slew of concrete reasons why I’m interested in you will line up out of nowhere. With luck, it might even snow for us.’"
‘Good question. I can’t explain it myself right this second. But maybe – just maybe – if we start getting together and talking, after a while something like Francis Lai’s soundtrack music will start playing in the background, and a whole slew of concrete reasons why I’m interested in you will line up out of nowhere. With luck, it might even snow for us.’"
– Haruki Murakami, After Dark
"It feels good to think about you when I’m warm in bed. I feel as if you’re curled up there beside me, fast asleep. And I think how great it would be if it were true."
– Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
"She’s sitting right in front of me, but at the same time she’s a million miles away."
– Haruki Murakami - After Dark
"I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for."
– Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
"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, 1Q84
"A long time ago I abandoned someone I shouldn’t have, someone I loved more than anything else. I was afraid someday I’d lose this person. So I had to let go myself. If he was going to be stolen away from me, or I was going to lose him by accident, I decided it was better to discard him myself. Of course I felt anger that didn’t fade, that was a part of it. But the whole thing was a huge mistake. It was someone I should never have abandoned."
– Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
