To know one's own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one's own face with one's own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one's reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all.
("The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle")
More Quotes from Haruki Murakami:
I don't want our relationship to end like this. You're one of the very few friends I have, and it hurts not being able to see you. When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least.Haruki Murakami
I don't know -- maybe the world has two different kinds of people, and for one kind the world is this completely logical, rice pudding place, and for the other it's all hit-or-miss macaroni gratin.
Haruki Murakami
The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape.
Haruki Murakami
Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.
Haruki Murakami
You know what girls are like. They turn twenty or twenty-one and all of a sudden they start having these concrete ideas. They get super realistic. And when that happens, everything that seemed so sweet and lovable about them begins to look ordinary and depressing.
Haruki Murakami
When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf.
Haruki Murakami
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Based on Topics: Experience QuotesThe moment one accosts a stranger or is accosted by him is above all in this life the moment of drama... Whoever we meet watches us intently at the quick, strange moment of meeting, to see whether we are disposed to be friendly.
Haniel Long
We are going as fast as we can as soon as we can. We're in a race against time, until we run out of money.
Jack Nicholson
A people that has experienced all that the Germans have been through, naturally offers fertile soil for the extremists.
Gustav Stresemann