18 Powerful Haruki Murakami Quotes to Help You Discover Yourself

Haruki Murakami is an award-winning Japanese writer who has produced many bestselling novels and short stories. His literary work has been translated into more than 50 languages. His popularity stems from his innate ability to put words together in a creative and sentimental way, making it easy for him to speak to the parts of us that are still trying to figure out who we are.

Haruki’s work has been quoted widely, with many people living by his quotes. In this article, I have listed 18 powerful Haruki Murakami quotes that will help you to discover yourself.

​18 Powerful Haruki Murakami Quotes to Help You Discover Yourself

​Haruki Murakami Quotes About Being Open-minded

#1. “I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.”

#2. “The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.”

#3. “Life is not like water. Things in life don’t necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.”

#4. “We’re both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We’re connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.”

​Haruki Murakami Quotes to Help You Pursue Your Own Path

#5. “In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.”

#6. “I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring.”

#7. “And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”

​Haruki Murakami Quotes to Help You Learn from Your Past

#8. “You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them.”

#9. “That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”

#10. “It occurred to me what a simple thing reality is, how easy it is to make it work. It’s just reality. Just housework. Just a home. Like running a simple machine. Once you learn to run it, it’s just a matter of repetition. You push this button and pull that lever. You adjust a gauge, put on the lid, set the timer. The same thing, over and over.”

​Haruki Murakami Quotes to Inspire You to Be Observant

#11. “It’s not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There’s shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort.”

#12. “I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.”

​Haruki Murakami Quotes About Embracing Pain and Learning from It

#13. “Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step.”

#14. “And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in.”

​ #15. “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

Haruki Murakami Quotes to Motivate You to Take Chances and Live Without Regrets

#16. “Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It’s too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies.”

#17. “But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”

#18. “Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”

​Final Thoughts

If you are looking for words to help you figure out who you are and your purpose in life, you can find inspiration in these insightful Haurki Murakami quotes. His work is both surrealistic and motivating. Critics have described his writing style as “easily accessible, yet profoundly complex”.


Image source: Haruki Murakami photo from pinterest.com