Haruki Murakami Quotes

People can try to reinvent themselves. I don't think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you've done up to now.

I think, over the course of one's lifetime, there are always certain core elements that are intriguing to you, and you take different looks as you get older, but it's something you keep coming back to. I've always been interested in the relationship between vulnerability and control. That's something that's a big thing for people, whoever they are, no matter how old you are. I think at different times, you're more aware than others.

I think that ties in with issues of identity as well - that sometimes there are parts of us we want to hide, and then there's other times we say, "You know what? Nope. Done hiding that part."

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.

Well, I think the world changes around you - I think you don't change. That's as simple as that.

A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others.

So for my own survival and my growth, as a soul, as an artist and as an emotional being, it was best that I assume an identity I didn't have to fight anyone over or that I have to constantly engage in constant tug of wars and just reinvent myself.

I can't just suddenly become 'Little Peace and Love Jair'... I've got to carry on being the same person.

There are always two sides to a person. CL is me, and so is Chaelin.

I felt that just looking at the world in general, there are so many types of people, and some hide who they truly are. And I feel that every person has some kind of warped identity inside them that they decide if they want to show or not.

I must only warn you of one thing. You have become a different person in the course of these years. For this is what the art of archery means: a profound and far-reaching contest of the archer with himself. Perhaps you have hardly noticed it yet, but you will feel it very strongly when you meet your friends and acquaintances again in your own country: things will no longer harmonize as before. You will see with other eyes and measure with other measures. It has happened to me too, and it happens to all who are touched by the spirit of this art.

The struggle to excavate your true, authentic self from beneath the mountain of conditioning and ridiculous expectation is the epic struggle of your lifetime.

Rejection is a form of self-assertion. You have only to look back upon yourself as a person who hates this or that to discover what it is that you secretly love.

All life is the struggle, the effort to be itself.

I felt at some point that I had nothing to lose, and [laughs] maybe I was wrong. I think, you know, there's always these little autobiographical secrets behind things. I think I was really attacking my earlier self, and this kind of pretentious figure.

We aren't in high school. We aren't really in our families and we aren't in our houses. Those are the places we grew up and the times we spent together, but they aren't us. If think they are, then we're lost, because times end and places are lost. We aren't any place or any time . . . We are everywhere.

She was working to remind herself of who she was. She was working to remember that somewhere in another place entirely she was known and loved.

You are what you are" "Which is what? I wondered

What are we taking from people and what do we give is a life-long struggle, I think, for most of us. Who are we? Do we like who we are? Do we know who we are? Do we care? Does anyone care? That's such a big topic. I could tackle that in many movies. So could other people.

I've had so many life expriences and those experiences create you little by little. You're never going to be the same person you were yesterday, right? I've definitely gone through some traumatic things that really changed my way of seeing.

Our identification with the mind and body is the chief reason for our failure to know our self as we truly are.

I think over time you learn to know a bit more about yourself - you develop a certain amount of self-insight and self-awareness, and you know what you can absorb, and what you cannot; what gets to you and what doesn't.

Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end.

I am never more myself than in my self-betrayals.