Haruki Murakami Quotes

Choice is destiny's soul mate.

As I get older, I think that things have been pre-determined for me, whether I liked it or wanted it, wished for it, whatever, way before in some way. And with others, you do have a choice that you can change. And that choice that you make is still part of this grand scheme.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road

I knew it like destiny, and at the same time, I knew it as choice.

Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions. Decisions make us.

The ending is nearer than you think, and it is already written. All that we have left to choose is the correct moment to begin.

You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.

Men speak of blind destiny, a thing without scheme or purpose. But what sort of destiny is that? Each act in this world from which there can be no turning back has before it another, and it another yet. In a vast endless net. Men imagine that the choices before them are theirs to make. But we are free to act only upon what is given. Choice is lost in the maze of generations and each act in the maze is itself an enslavement for it voids every alternative and binds one ever more tightly into the constraints that make a life.

Certainly. My whole life has been decided by fate. I think something more powerful than we are decides our fates for us. I know one thing – I've never planned anything that ever happened to me.

Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased. I had no belief in your ability to move a coin to your bidding. How could you? A person's path through the world seldom changes and even more seldom will it change abruptly. And the shape of your path was visible from the beginning.

Sometimes we can choose the paths we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.

We're living under the illusion that we have the power to determine what to do with it.

We like to believe we are in control of our destinies, even though we never are and we never have been.

Fatalism is a false premise. What will be is not necessarily what must be.

The Fates guide those who will and drag those who won't!

I come down on the side of free will but I have sympathy for those who believe in fate because there is something about life which we feel we have no control over.

Now I see it clearly. My whole life has pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been any choice for me.

You seem to think you have a choice," Cam said. "But you have it backwards. Love chooses you. The shadow moves as the sun commands.

Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.

Perhaps Fate laid out your life for you like a dress on a bed, and you could either wear it or go naked.

Decision equals destiny.

What must be shall be; and that which is a necessity to him that struggles, is little more than choice to him that is willing.

I hate the word "inevitable" because I feel like things don't have to be the way they are.