Haruki Murakami Quotes

I love the fact that people can relate to what I'm saying, even if it's not for the same subject I was writing about. That is the power of real music and real expression.

I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details, is how you get the big, big audiences - by talking about your relationships or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people.

It definitely seems like we are connecting with people, which is nice, because I've had a lot of music do the same for me. It's not like I don't I understand why we get the reactions we do.

If someone is expressing everything I am feeling at the moment, it's probably Jon Stewart. I hear him and think, Yeah!

The audience likes a speaker with the same weakness and the same virtues that they themselves have.

I feel like a lot of people can relate to my music.

It's important to me to create archetypes of human experiences and make them so that the song has a sense of purpose when you experience those emotions. You know, just making people feel like they're not alone.

I think when people hear your music, sometimes they get deeply attached to it and think they know something about you, that you're kindred spirits or something.

It had better be quirky or perverse or thoughtful enough so that you hit some chord in them. I mean we've all read pieces where we thought, 'Oh, who gives a damn.'

A good story isn't the one that shuts everyone down and sort of leaves them in silent awe. A good story is one that, even before you finish the anecdote, you can see their eyes shining because it has so resonated with something from their own lives that everyone in the group has a version of the same story and they cannot wait to tell it, and that they're going to compete to make their version even more extreme than your version. So your version is just a seed.

A lot of people have told me, you know, that what I've written about, they identify with strongly.

I wanted to do something different. Therefore, the first person I thought would have been too exclusionary. It would have said me, me, me, me, me. I, I, I, I, I. As if I were pushing away my experiences from the experiences of others. Because basically what I was trying to do was show our commonality. I mean to say, in the very ordinariness of what I recount I think perhaps the reader will find resonances with his or her own life.

I think there's just a lot of compassion in art. Again, when you're doing something that resonates with somebody else, you're going through an experience another person has had, whether it's been a painful experience or a joyous experience or a happy experience.

For me, I think it's such an important thing to hear other people's stories, because you do find ways that either you can learn something from them, or you can identify with something that they've gone through. You realize that maybe what you're going through in life isn't just specific to you, that somebody else understands it, or you talk to someone and all of sudden you see something in a completely different way because of what they've said to you or shared with you.

You know, when you think about it, that’s kind of a weird thing. I mean it’s meant to be sympathetic, right? But it’s kind of not. Like you’re telling the person there’s nothing unique about what they’re saying I considered this as a couple of kids on Rollerblades whizzed past, hockey sticks over their shoulders. “Yeah,” I said, finally, “but you could also look at it the other way. Like no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.

I think I was able to talk to people about values in ways that people - in ways that resonated with folks.

That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?

When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story.

A good song stays in your head because it's catchy, a great song stays because it means something to you.

What I write is emotionally honest and truthful as the human experience can be, to make people feel less alone, or at least that's the hope.

Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.

If you talk about sin, you don't have to use the first person singular, but speak out of that part of yourself which knows what it means to become estranged from people you love. Speak in your own voice about things that you in your own life have in one way or another experienced.

It's strange how we always want other people to feel what we feel. It must be a basic human drive. Misery loves company, right? Or when you see a movie that you love, don't you want to drag all your friends to see it as well? Because it's only good the second time if it's the first time for somebody else—as if their experience somehow resonates inside of you.

And I think right now I'm just enjoying finding something such as One Weekend a Month where I can really resonate with this woman's history and her situation.

The arts especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak; when you’re present in the current moment; when you’re resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing; when you are fully alive.