Sarah > Sarah's Quotes

“Eleven o'clock had come and gone. I had to find a way to bring this conversation to a successful conclusion and get out of there. But before I could say anything, she suddenly asked me to hold her.
'Why?' I asked, caught off guard.
'To charge my batteries,' she said.
'Charge your batteries?'
'My body has run out of electricity. I haven't been able to sleep for days now. The minute I get to sleep I wake up, and then I can't get back to sleep. I can't think. When I get like that, somebody has to charge my batteries. Otherwise, I can't go on living. It's true.'
I peered into her eyes, wondering if she was still drunk, but they were once again her usual cool, intelligent eyes. She was far from drunk.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“How many Sundays – how many hundreds of Sundays like this – lay ahead of me? “Quiet, peaceful and lonely,” I said aloud to myself. On Sundays I didn't wind my spring.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“People have their own reasons for dying. It might look simple, but it never is. It's just like a rock. What's above ground is only a small part of it. But if you start pulling, it keeps coming and coming. The human mind dwells deep in darkness. Only the person himself knows the real reason, and maybe not even then.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“I’m not good at talking,” Naoko said. “Haven’t been for the longest while. I start to say something and the wrong words come out. Wrong or sometimes completely backward. I try to go back and correct it, but things get even more complicated and confused, so that I don’t even remember what I started to say in the first place. Like I was split into two or something, one half chasing the other. And there’s this big pillar in the middle and they go chasing each other around and around it. The other me always latches onto the right word and this me absolutely never catches up”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Every one of us is losing something precious to us... Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's what part of it means to be alive. But inside our heads- at least that's where I imagine it- there's a litle room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let fresh air in, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live for ever in your own private library.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of it. By living our lives, we nurture death.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I don't think most people would like my personality. There might be a few--very few, I would imagine--who are impressed by it, but only rarely would anyone like it. Who in the world could possibly have warm feelings, or something like them, for a person who doesn't compromise, who instead, whenever a problem crops up, locks himself away alone in a closet? But is it ever possible for a professional writer to be liked by people? I have no idea. Maybe somewhere in the world it is. It's hard to generalize. For me, at least, I've written novels over many years, I just can't picture someone liking me on a personal level. Being disliked by someone, hated and despised, somehow seems more natural. Not that I'm relieved when that happens. Even I'm not happy when someone dislikes me.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“It's like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“Let’s say you are an empty vessel. So what? What’s wrong with that?” Eri said. “You’re still a wonderful, attractive vessel. And really, does anybody know who they are? So why not be a completely beautiful vessel? The kind people feel good about, the kind people want to entrust with precious belongings.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call myself bald. I know my hairline is a little …” “Shut up, will you?” Aomame said, trying her best not to frown. I shouldn’t scare him too much, she thought, softening her tone somewhat. “That’s really not important.” Look, mister, I don’t care what you think, you are bald. If the census had a “bald” category, you’d be in it, no problem. If you go to heaven, you’re going to bald heaven. If you go to hell, you’re going to bald hell. Have you got that straight? Then stop looking away from the truth. Let’s go now. I’m taking you straight to bald heaven, nonstop.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

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

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“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

“Thinking about time was torment. Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in. So much so, we can't even tell whether our experiences belong to time or to the world of physical things.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“...Reality was one step out of line, a cardigan with its buttons done up wrong.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“يا عصفورتي الأحلى ..

ويا أَيْقُونتي الأَغْلَى

ويا دَمْعَاً تناثرَ فوق خَدِّ المجدليَّةْ”
― نزار قباني, قصيدة بلقيس

“ها نحن .. يا بلقيس ..
ندخل مرةً أخرى لعصر الجاهلية ..
ها نحن ندخل في التوحش ..
والتخلف .. والبشاعة .. والوضاعة ..
ندخل مرةً أخرى .. عصور البربرية ..
حيث الكتابة رحلةٌ
بين الشظية .. والشظية
حيث اغتيال فراشةٍ في حقلها ..
صار القضية ..
هل تعرفون حبيبتي بلقيس ؟”
― نزار قباني, قصيدة بلقيس