Haruki Murakami Quotes

When I turned 30, I knew my life was at a crossroads. It was either over, or I was going to restart.

I always did think that when I turned 40, I'd start coming into my own.

In your mid-30s, you have to take inventory, or you'll stumble.

When I was turning 40, I felt that there were no books out there that hit the spot in terms of what I wanted to read.

'Dr. Quinn' came along when I turned 40, so my career actually peaked then.

Your children are grown and your career has slowed down - all the stuff that took up so much attention is gone, and you're left with expansive time and space. You have to reimagine who you are and what life is about.

When I turned 40, subconsciously, life was a blank sheet. Before, it was disjointed, and I was very displaced and quite mad, but it was a brilliant time. Everyone thinks I must have been unhappy.

I never got into sports at all until I was in my early 20s, after my music career got going.

All novelists I speak to about how they started usually say it was by pulling up their roots and going to live somewhere else. You see the shape of your life at a distance.

When I left HEEP I didn't know what I wanted! It took me a long time to adjust to life away from the band and the only thing I knew was that I didn't want to repeat my mistakes!

As I enter a new phase of life and my circle broadens, I start learning new things.

Honestly, so much of my book is about the best things in my life have happened since I'm 40.

When I came back to Britain, I realized that I was no longer a very young woman. I had to meet my new consciousness, my new age, with roles that reflected it somewhat.

Wonderful things happen when you turn 50: you change perspective. You ask, 'Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? What have I not done that I want to do?'

Speaking personally, I didn't think 40 would be a big issue, and I don't think I have issues about age, but there are naturally some big questions that come up at that point in your life.

It's not that I don't respect my parents' authority or appreciate all that they did for me, but when I was 18 I was able to move out, and I was out. I feel like a different person since then; I mean, it's obviously a big turning point in life. I feel like I've established myself, and I'm a smarter and more mature for it.

I think I was going through a lot of change at 27, but I didn't know it was happening until it was over.

I see retirement as just another of these reinventions, another chance to do new things and be a new version of myself.

I did have a midlife crisis.

When I got pregnant, I knew I wasn't anywhere in my career, that I had not arrived. I was still on my adventure, and so I said to the child in my belly, 'I am so happy for you to come, but you should know I'm still on my way, and you'll have to come with me and be in my rucksack.'

It was a big step for me in the Netherlands: to leave home at the age of 18.

Some people go off to an ashram or they, you know, have a midlife crisis and buy a sports car. For me, I do 'Hedwig,' and I see it's a midlife crisis maybe, and I see what's next. And it's a good trampoline, maybe, into the next part of my life.

I hit my thirties and felt I had to start being profound.

I was having a really-early-onset midlife crisis, and then something clicked in an improv class, and I knew.

I was born in California and moved around a lot. When I was 17, I moved to Boston because my mom got a job there. The moment I went to Boston, everything just felt right and fell into place on how I wanted it to be.