Haruki Murakami

Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action.

It's easy to forget things you don't need anymore.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.

People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies.

Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.

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.

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.

When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.

A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.

In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.

That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.

It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can't predict it. That's love.

As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.