Haruki Murakami Quotes

No destiny attacks us from outside. But, within him, man bears his fate and there comes a moment when he knows himself vulnerable; and then, as in a vertigo, blunder upon blunder lures him.

I live with that contradiction daily. It is a constant struggle. I struggle very deeply. I don't think I've said this to anyone, but I've wondered if I just want to give up this world and live in the Congo and just be there. But I don't think that's what they need from me.

I, too, was carrying around my own fate. All the things I couldn't know sat somewhere inside, embroidered into me-maybe not quite fixed to the point of inevitability but waiting, in any event, for a chance to unspool.

Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it.

Some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.

I can't wish I weren't something that I am.

Everybody has their own path and I believe everything happens for a reason and you kind of just rock with it.

I always had a sense of where I was going with 'Dark Phoenix.' Jean had the greatest power imaginable... and, how's she going to deal with that?

It was one of those times when you can feel the air in a room. Everything stood still. I can remember the T-shirt I was wearing and the bag I was carrying. I don't think I breathed for 15 minutes. It was a devastating moment. They said they wanted me to experience more things. OK. I began contemplating things. Maybe I should take LSD or become a hooker. I left Juilliard and was just meandering and drifting for a while. Thank God I had support from my family and close friends. Bad times.

Ten thousand million nightmares, temptation by the score, I used to get so high, and still I wanted more. You think my time is wasted in search of who I am, I tried so hard to kill the boy inside the man.

Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep. We don't know how to let go. We're like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box.

I had a very rough and tumultuous childhood. I often wish that I had the opportunity to make my own choices in life and choose my own path. But at the same time, I realize that things happen the way they're supposed to.

I say, "Look, I'm here now. There must be a reason I'm here." If that's fatalistic, be that as it may. Where my work is, is where my life is, and if we're falling in the ocean, we're falling into the ocean.

It is impressive to see a person who has been battered by life in many ways, who is torn by a variety of unsolved problems, who may be alienated from many aspects of the self-but who is still fighting, still struggling, still striving to find the path to a fulfilling existence, moved by the wisdom of knowing, "I am more than my problems."

...life is in Fate's hands now. You made your choice to stay... it's too late to change that, so stop agonizing over it.... You're making my scales itch. Saphira, from "Eragon

But I must bear my destiny as best I can, knowing well that there is no resisting the strength of necessity.

Death did not play favorites—He loved all equally. What you cannot escape, you must fight; what you cannot fight, you must endure . The god's voice—not quite words, just a thread of meaning laid in my receptive mind—

There is no tragedy, only the unavoidable. Everything has its reason for being: you only need to distinguish what is temporary from what is lasting.

Everyone fears and courts his own demon.

Some wars," he said dismissively. "What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart is made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner.

If it is our destiny to be hit by the train, we will be hit by the train. The only thing we can change is how the train turns us into a hamburger.

It is the measure of my individual struggle from darkness toward some measure of light.

... it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.

I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.