Haruki Murakami Quotes

It was not really possible to understand oneself, let alone another human being.

But what do we know of the heart nearest to our own? What do we know of our own heart?

The mystery at the center of 'Burial Rites' is not who killed whom on the night of March 13, 1828. It is the mystery each of us encounters: Can we every truly know another? Can we ever truly know ourselves?

I think I've got a good feel. A feel for... being able to walk with different people. Or for being able to look at people and think, 'Yeah, I might know what they want to wear.'

Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding.

We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world - introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably - that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.

Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness.

And he who does not know himself does not know others, so it may be said with equal truth, that he who does not know others knows himself but very imperfectly.

To the extent to which you know yourself, and we are all more alike than different, you can know others. When you love yourself, you will love others. And to the depth and extent to which you can love yourself, only to that depth and extent will you be able to love others.

...you realize that you don't understand yourself any better than you understand anyone else.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.

I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior. I am really interested in feelings and think they are what define us as a species. When you really get it right in acting, it's an act of empathy. You feel less distant from others, and that is really exciting.

I'm entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they're thinking and who they are and who's hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what's the story, really?

We think the whole world's going to change, and forget that human beings are still human beings; we have the same five senses, we still interact the same way, we still love and hate the same way, but marketers lose track of that. But then it comes down to earth.

If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.

For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.

I've always read in order to figure out people more, and that includes bad people and good people.

I learned so much about life and other human beings - then about myself.

One of the illusions that we live by is that we can really know anybody else, and we're often surprised by traits in people that we thought we knew very well. The struggle to overcome loneliness, which is sort of our universal burden, leads us to leap to conclusions about who other people are.

People always like people, you know?

Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others.

There's nobody you can't love once you know their story. I believe that to be, in the majority, true.