Reader > Reader's Quotes

“When I start to feel emotional about something, I can't tell if I'm actually feeling that way. What if it's just something somebody wrote in a book? Or maybe a line or a performance from some movie... Either way, I get this feeling like I'm quoting somebody else's work.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

“Why does the night have to be so beautiful? As I walk through the night, I remember what Mitsutsuka said to me. “Because at night, only half the world remains.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

“I was so scared of being hurt that I'd done nothing. I was so scared of failing, of being hurt, that I choose nothing. I did nothing.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

“Memory's funny, isn't it? We remember some things out of nowhere, but so much of what happens, we never think about again.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

“there are way too many things you'll never remember. Sometimes a memory jumps out at you, even though almost everything is lost forever. But what if all the things that we can't remember are actually the most important ones?”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

“As long as you're living on this planet, you have to be serious about something, but it's better to be serious about a limited number of things.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

“You can make people believe whatever you want. You can fool them like it’s nothing. But you can’t fool yourself, not really. That’s why what matters is how you think about your work in your own lifetime, how much you respect it, how hard you’re trying. Or tried.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All The Lovers In The Night

“Night ended, morning came, and as I looked out on the blueness spreading into the corners of the sky, I thought about what he had told me, about all the light that was there and yet impossible to see.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

“My life is nowhere but here, and I am nowhere else.”
― Mieko Kawakami, All The Lovers In The Night

“Why does the night have to be so beautiful?”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

“Don’t be afraid to love someone. When you fall in love, I want you to fall in love all the way. Even if it ends in heartache, please don’t live a lonely life without love. I’ve been so worried that because of what happened you’ll give up on falling in love. Love is wonderful. I don’t want you to forget that. Those memories of people you love, they never disappear. They go on warming your heart as long as you live. When you get old like me, you’ll understand.”
― Satoshi Yagisawa, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop

“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, 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, Norwegian Wood

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

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

“People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

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

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

“Naturally I feel no shame in writing these things because of the time which separates the moment when they are written--when only I can see them--from the moment when they will be read by other people, a moment which I feel will never come. By then I could have had an accident or died; a war or a revolution could have broken out. This delay makes it possible for me to write today, in the same way I used to lie in the scorching sun for a whole day at sixteen, or make love wihout contraceptives at twenty: without thinking about the consequences”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Sometimes I wonder if the purpose of my writing is to find out whether other people have done or felt the same things or, if not, for them to consider experiencing such things as normal. Maybe I would also like them to live out these very emotions in turn, forgetting that they had once read about them somewhere.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“I do not wish to explain my passion—that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify—I just want to describe it.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“I experienced pleasure like a future pain.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“When someone confided in me, a man or a woman who admitted they were having, or had had, "a crazy love affair with a guy" or "a very close relationship with someone," I occasionally felt like opening up. But once the excitement of sharing our secrets was over, I resented having let myself go, if only a little. Those conversations, when I had continually responded to the other person by saying "me too, it's the same for me, I did that too," suddenly seemed futile, removed from the reality of my own passion. Rather, something was lost through these outbursts.”
― Annie Ernaux;, Simple Passion

“The soul, you see, is a shy and retiring thing. It lurks in dark places and dislikes sunlight. And so, if you do not keep the skylight open at all times, the soul will rot. It easily decays, like a fresh sea urchin.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Frolic of the Beasts

“He had underestimated me. All along. Even though I had not underestimated him. But, how do you love someone without blinding yourself? Don’t we all have to indulge each other, let our guard down, and -ever so slightly- lower ourselves, in order to love someone?”
― Hiromi Kawakami, The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino