Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living (I suppose there are a few exceptions), they think that the world of life (or whatever) is this place where everything is (or is supposed to be) basically logical and consistent.... It's like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you've got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when is the microwave rings? You can't tell what's going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody's looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it's natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me that's just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave, and it rang, and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin.

— Haruki Murakami

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

— Haruki Murakami

A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterward, not something to be known in advance.

— Haruki Murakami

A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born, but you can choose how to die.

— Haruki Murakami

A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born, but you can choose how you die.

— Haruki Murakami

A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty-four. But after that you assume everything’s going to be all right. You’ve made it past Dead Man’s Curve, and you’re out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.

— Haruki Murakami

April and May were painful, lonely months for me because I couldn't talk to you. I never knew that spring could be so painful and lonely. Better to have three Februaries than a spring like this.

— Haruki Murakami

April ended and May came along, but May was even worse than April. In the deepening spring of May, I had not choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass - but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.

— Haruki Murakami

A question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime

— Haruki Murakami

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it blocks my throat and makes it hard to breathe. Somehow I swallow it back, finally choosing another. "Are memories such an important thing?"" It depends," she replies, and closes her eyes. "In some cases, they're the most important thing there is.

— Haruki Murakami