1Q84 Quotes

“Everybody feels safe belonging not to the excluded minority but to the excluding majority. You think, Oh, I’m glad that’s not me. It’s basically the same in all periods in all societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality!”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?"

"It is if you first become a part of nature. You suppress your presence as a human being, stay very still, and convince yourself that you are a tree or grass or a flower. It takes time, but once the butterfly lets its guard down, you can become friends quite naturally."

...

" ... I come here every day, say hello to the butterflies, and talk about things with them. When the time comes, though, they just quietly go off and disappear. I'm sure it means they've died, but I can never find their bodies. They don't leave any trace behind. It's like they've been absorbed by the air. They're dainty little creatures that hardly exist at all: they come out of nowhere, search quietly for a few, limited things, and disappear into nothingness again, perhaps to some other world.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

“It's like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn't move.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Wherever there's hope there's a trial.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Either I'm funny or the world's funny. I don't know which. The bottle and lid don't fit. It could be the bottle's fault or the lid's fault. In either case, there's no denying that the fit is bad.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I’ve had that kind of experience myself: I’m looking at a map and I see someplace that makes me think, ‘I absolutely have to go to this place, no matter what’. And most of the time, for some reason, the place is far away and hard to get to. I feel this overwhelming desire to know what kind of scenery the place has, or what people are doing there. It’s like measles - you can’t show other people exactly where the passion comes from. It’s curiosity in the purest sense. An inexplicable inspiration.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“He appeared before me and departed. We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

“I move, therefore I am.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“The two of them on top of the freezing slide, wordlessly holding hands. Once again they were a ten-year-old boy and girl. A lonely boy, and a lonely girl. A classroom, just after school let out, at the beginning of winter. They had neither the power nor the knowledge to know what they should offer to each other, what they should be seeking. They had never, ever, been truly loved, or truly loved someone else. They had never held anyone, never been held. They had not idea, either, where this action would take them. What they entered then was a doorless room. They couldn't get out, nor could anyone else come in. The two of them didn't know it at the time, but this was the only truly complete place in the entire world. Totally isolated, yet the one place not tainted with loneliness.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“It's not me but the world that's deranged.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers-passageways- for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don't think about what constitutes good or evil. They don't care whether we are happy or unhappy. We're just means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I'm an average person. Is just that I like reading.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

“Shakespeare said it best,' Tamaru said quietly as he gazed at that lumpish, misshapen head. 'Something along these lines: if we die today, we do not have to die tomorrow, so let us look to the best in each other”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“You can have tons of talent, but it won't necessarily keep you fed. If you have sharp instincts, through, you'll never go hungry.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

“Don’t you see? You and he might never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you have to see there’s a huge possibility you’ll never be able to meet him again. And even if you do meet, he might already be married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isn’t that so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with the one person you love in all the world. Don’t you find that scary?”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“People need routines. It's like a theme in music. But it also restricts your thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

“Where I'm living is not a storybook world. It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“If there's any guy crazy enough to attack me, I'm going to show him the end of the world -- close up. I'm going to let him see the kingdom come with his own eyes. I'm going to send him straight to the southern hemisphere and let the ashes of death rain all over him and the kangaroos and the wallabies.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Listening to the music while stretching her body close to its limit, she was able to attain a mysterious calm. She was simultaneously the torturer and the tortured, the forcer and the forced. This sense of inner-directed self-sufficiency was what she wanted most of all. It gave her deep solace.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“There’s nothing wrong with not looking like something. It just means you don’t fit the stereotype yet.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Things may look different to you than they did before. I've had that experience myself. But don't let appearances fool you. There's only one reality.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

“Math is like water. It has a lot of difficult theories, of course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from high to low over the shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. You just have to keep your eye on them for the route to reveal itself. That’s all it takes. You don’t have to do a thing. Just concentrate your attention and keep your eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to you. In this whole, wide world, the only thing that treats me so kindly is math.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“How about Proust's In Search of Lost Time?" Tamaru asked. "If you've never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing."

"Have you read it?"

"No, I haven't been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can't read the whole of Proust.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84