Haruki Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood” Quotes (55 Quotes)

I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.

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

Urging others to read F. Scott Fitzgerald, if not a reactionary act, was not something one could do in 1968.

I read Naoko's letter again and again, and each time I read it I would be filled with the same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body, it had neither shape nor weight, nor could I wrap myself in it.

Life is like a box of cookies.

Wasn't he the one who said you shouldn't trust anybody who calls himself an ordinar man? - Naoko

All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world.

I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?

My arm was not what she needed, but the arm of someone else. My warmth was not what she needed, but the warmth of someone else.

We heard no other sounds. We met no other people. We saw only two bright red birds leap startled from the center of the meadow and dart into the woods.

And as the years have passed, the time has grown longer. The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute - like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness.

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.

What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.

Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of life.

I was thirty-seven then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport.

Not that we were incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about.

What the hell kind of revolution have you got just tossing out big words that working-class people can't understand?

Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.

I wonder what ants do on rainy days?

Only the dead stay 17 forever.

When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it.

Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.

I wondered if she was trying to convey something to me, something she could not put into words - something prior to words that she could not grasp within herself and which therefore had no hope of ever turning into words.

Only the Dead stay seventeen forever.

Where I went in my travels, it's impossible for me to recall. I remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in which I traveled from place to place.

Each day the sun would rise and set, the flag would be raised and lowered. Each Sunday I would have a date with my dead friend's girl. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was going to do.

If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well.

So I'm not crazy after all! I thought it looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a first grader or a concentration camp survivor. What's this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. Really.

With Naoko gone, I went to sleep on the sofa. I hadn't intended to do so, but I fell into the kind of deep sleep I had not in a long time, filled with a sense of Naoko's presence. In the kitchen were the dishes Naoko ate from, in the bathroom was the toothbrush Naoko used, and in the bedroom was the bed in which Naoko slept. Sleeping soundly in this apartment of hers, I wrung the fatigue from every cell of my body, drop by drop. I dreamed of a butterfly dancing in the half-light.

Every once in a while she'll get worked up and cry like that. But that's ok. She's letting her feelings out. The scary thing is not being able to do that. Then your feelings build up and harden and die inside. That's when you're in big trouble.

If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit.

Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern.

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.

From the girl who sat before me now...surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair. I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.

I'm confused. Really confused. And it's a lot deeper than you think. Deeperà darkerà colder. But tell me something. How could you have slept with me that time? How could you have done such a thing? Why didn't you just leave me alone?

Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum-a huge empty museum where no one ever comes and I'm watching over it for no one but myself.

Hey Kizuki, I thought, you're not missing a damn thing. This world is a piece of shit. The assholes are earning their college credits and helping to create a society in their own disgusting image.

In his own way, he's lived life with all the intensity he could muster.

That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive.

I can never say what I want to say, it's been like this for a while now. I try to say something but all I get are wrong words - the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It's like I'm split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing this big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this can't catch her.

It was a small room with dim light coming in the window, reminiscent of old Polish films.

The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living.

I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy.

It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.

The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be.

I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all.

It's basically impossible for everybody's justice to prevail or everybody's happiness to triumph, so chaos takes over.

The world is an inherently unfair place.

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.