Tokyo Decadence Quotes

“Even now I occasionally get a long letter from Kimiko, who’s still in and out of mental hospitals. I’ve never written a reply. The Last Picture Show Iwas eighteen.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence: 15 Stories

“Most of the advice was along the lines of, “If you persevere in your efforts you will surely succeed,” which is bullshit, if you ask me. People who turn to stuff like this have probably already persevered and gotten nowhere.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence: 15 Stories

“that you don’t suffer because of someone else. There’s never anyone but”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence: 15 Stories

“If you don’t know what you want, you’ll never find it.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“when beautiful women get angry, it scares people. Ugly women get mad and it’s just comical, right?”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“Self-esteem isn’t an emotion. Self-esteem is just self-knowledge, a solid understanding of your limitations. It’s living according to your own standards.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“I was worried that at this rate our mutual affection might begin to cool, that the special feelings we had for each other would end up as nothing more than close friendship. Male–female relationships are always in transition. If there’s no forward progress, things tend to slip backwards.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“Over the previous four days I had prepared my answers to all the questions I thought she might ask. Such is the wisdom—or the sad compulsion—of someone who was semi-autistic as a child.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“talking with him made me realize I wasn’t the only one. “I mean, it’s like everybody’s acting out a part,” he’d tell me. “They say stuff they don’t really think, or do stuff they don’t really feel like doing, and after a while you find yourself acting the same way.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“Surely he’d have no trouble finding a replacement for someone like me.”
“You may like to tell yourself that, but it’s only an excuse for not giving a damn about his feelings. Anyway, enough of that.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“I hate people who break down crying when you’re trying to talk about something important. Men and women both. You can’t trust weepy people. They think they’re the center of the world, and that their tears can absolve them of anything.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“I never liked to just absorb something somebody else created. I’m too self-conscious, and too critical, I guess, and it always felt like I was wasting time. But after you went away... well, it started to feel like time was wasting me. Every tick of the second hand was like a needle in my skin. Tick, tick, tick...”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but it’s not true. The cover is all you get.
But it is true that appearances can be deceptive, surely.
Only if you let yourself be influenced by what other people think. If you trust your own feelings, you can judge anybody by the way they look and never go wrong.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“No one gets drunk in order to raise their moral standards.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence: 15 Stories

“I was glad I’d chosen this time of day to meet. Broad daylight doesn’t lend itself to intimate personal confessions.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“She was an ordinary person. But by ‘ordinary’ I just mean that she didn’t have any need to dramatize herself. It’s not a criticism. I don’t think of the urge to perform as something that adds to a person’s character. If anything, it’s a defect, especially when it’s coupled with a need to compete.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“When people lose control of their emotions, they tend to seek absolute satisfaction from the object of their fury. And since absolute satisfaction does not exist in this world, I knew she was going to rave on until she reached a state of exhaustion, and a certain queer sense of fulfillment.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“Find something that, when you’re doing it, makes you feel like you don’t have anywhere to go. If you don’t find it, you’ll end up having to go somewhere you don’t want to.”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence