Samko > Samko's Quotes

“That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Even if we could turn back, we'd probably never end up where we started.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Please remember: things are not what they seem.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities, but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everthing's being decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Where there is light, there must be shadow, where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow.... We do not know if the so-called Little People are good or evil. This is, in a sense, something that surpasses our understanding and our definitions. We have lived with them since long, long ago-- from a time before good and evil even existed, when people's minds were still benighted.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: 'At the time, no one knew what was coming.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“It's like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn't move.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow. Karl Jung said this about 'the Shadow' in one of his books: 'It is as evil as we are positive... the more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive... The fact is that if one tries beyond one's capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends to hell and becomes the devil. For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don't like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I can.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“But actually time isn't a straight line. It doesn't ave a shape. In all senses of the term, it doesn't have any form. But since we can't picture something without form in our minds, for the sake of convenience we understand it as a straight line. At this point, humans are the only ones who can make that sort of conceptual substitution.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“At the entrance to the original tower, there is a stone into which Jung carved some words with his own hand: 'Cold or not, God is present.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Of course, reading novels was just another form of escape. As soon as he closed their pages he had to come back to the real world. But at some point Tengo noticed that returning to reality from the world of a novel was not as devastating a blow as returning from the world of mathematics. Why should that have been? After much deep thought, he reached a conclusion. No matter how clear the relationships of things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution. That was how it differed from math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that suggestion in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and served no immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Someday he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I was reborn," she said, her hot breath brushing his ear.
"You were reborn," Tengo said.
"Because I died once."
"You died once," Tengo repeated.
"On a night when there was a cold rain falling," she said.
"Why did you die?"
"So I would be reborn like this."
"You would be reborn," Tengo said.
"More or less," she whispered quietly. "In all sorts of forms.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Tolstoy’s famous line, all happiness is alike, but each pain is painful in its own way.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Once the ego is born into this world, it has to shoulder morality.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Most people believe not so much in truth as in things they wish were the truth. Their eyes may be wide open, but they don't see a thing. Tricking them is as easy as twisting a baby's arm.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Principles and logic didn't give birth to reality. Reality came first, and the principles and logic followed.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“It's like watching some rare exotic butterfly. Pleasant to watch, but you can't touch it, for as soon as you do, it dies, it's brilliance gone.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“No one can know everything about another person. Not even God, probably.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“If you don’t believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony. No matter which world we are talking about, no matter what kind of world we are talking about, the line separating fact from hypothesis is practically invisible to the eye. It can only be seen with the inner eye, the eye of the mind.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84