For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary – or perhaps more like mediocre – level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.


Haruki Murakami

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I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than me. I used to think it was such...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I shouted into the phone, but there was no reply. Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke fr...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Hajime," she began, "the sad truth is that some things can't go backwards. Once they start going for...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpec...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Once she was out of the car and gone, my world was suddenly hollow and meaningless.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
No one could say how long that life would last. Whatever has form can disappear in an instant.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body fallin...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
She was, if anything, on the plain side, at least not the type to attract men wherever she went. But...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
sometimes i'd wake up at two or three in the morning and not be able to fall asleep again. i'd get o...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Inside that darkness, i saw rain falling on the sea. Rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no one ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Once thing goes wrong, then the whole house of cards collapses. And there's no way you can extricate...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened t...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality-call ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I always feel as if I'm struggling to become someone else. As if I'm trying to find a new place, gra...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn't kee...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
But you know Hajime, some feelings cause us pain because they remain.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Reading was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night, in scho...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Even castles in the sky can do with a fresh coat of paint.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Lots of different ways to live and lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. I...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once they start going forward, no m...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I wasn't in love with her. And she didn't love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Have you heard of the illness hysteria siberiana? Try to imagine this: You're a farmer, livin...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
No matter where i go, i still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but i...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, someth...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured.At least by the person who's waiting.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
You can see a person's whole life in the cancer they get.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Most near-future fictions are boring. It's always dark and always raining, and people are so unh...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I'm 100 percent fiction writer... I don&#...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
You live by yourself for a stretch of time and you get to staring at different objects. Sometimes yo...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
These days I just can't seem to say what I mean [...]. I just can't. Every time I try to say somethi...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
From his shoulder on down, the Rat felt the supple weight of her body. An odd sensation, that weight...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we t...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
He would eventually have to pass through the forest, but he felt no fear. Of course - the forest was...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life—bigger and deeper than anyth...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
The things she most wanted to tell him would lose their meaning the moment she put them into words.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Things can be seen better in the darkness," he said, as if he had just seen into her mind. "But the ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born but you can choose ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were n...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jo...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Night...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I have always liked running, so it wasn't particularly difficult to make it a habit. All you nee...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Nah, I shook my head, things that come out of nowhere go back to nowhere, that’s all.

W...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
It seems to me that very sad things always contain an element of the comical
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book;...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Maybe I am fated to always be alone, Tsukuru found himself thinking. People came to him, but in the ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be lear...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Wherever there's hope there's a trial.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
I'm just ordinary guy, ordinary family, ordinary education, ordinary face, ordinary exam results, or...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
He wasn't normally conscious of it, but there was one part of his body that was extremely sensitive,...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer,...
HARUKI MURAKAMI