Quotes From "Dance Dance Dance" By Haruki Murakami

People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can't predict it. That's love. Haruki Murakami

People die all the time. 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. Haruki Murakami

Latter-day capitalism. Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match. Like pulling on a Missoni sweater over Trussardi slacks and Pollini shoes, you can now enjoy hybrid styles of morality. It's the way of the world -- philosophy starting to look more and more like business administration. Haruki Murakami

People have their own reasons for dying. It might look simple, but it never is. It's just like a rock. What's above ground is only a small part of it. But if you start pulling, it keeps coming and coming. The human mind dwells deep in darkness. Only the person himself knows the real reason, and maybe not even then. Haruki Murakami

Latter-day capitalism. Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdi-vided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfash-ionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match. Like pulling on a Missoni sweater over Trussardi slacks and Pollini shoes, you can now enjoy hybrid styles of morality. It's the way of the world–philosophy starting to look more and more like business administration. Although I didn't think so at the time, things were a lot simpler in 1969. All you had to do to express yourself was throw rocks at riot police. But with today's sophistication, who's in a position to throw rocks? Who's going to brave what tear gas? C'mon, that's the way it is. Everything is rigged, tied into that massive capital web, and beyond this web there's another web. Nobody's going anywhere. You throw a rock and it'll come right back at you. Haruki Murakami

My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death. Haruki Murakami

It's unfair." As a rule, life is unfair, " I said. Yeah, but I think I did say some awful things." To Dick?"Yeah."I pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and turned off the ignition. "That's just stupid, that kind of thinking, " I said, nailing her with my eyes. "Instead of regretting what you did, you could have treated him decently from the beginning. You could've tried to be fair. But you didn't. You don't even have the right to be sorry. . Haruki Murakami

Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror. Haruki Murakami

When I was little, I had this science book. There was a section on 'What would happen to the world if there was no friction?' Answer: 'Everything on earth would fly into space from the centrifugal force of revolution.' That was my mood. Haruki Murakami

Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights. Haruki Murakami

The real world–where I probably could never be happy, and never get anywhere. Haruki Murakami

For darkness terrifies. It swallows you, warps you, nullifies you. Who alive can possibly profess confidence in darkness? In the dark, you can't see. Haruki Murakami

We keep moving. And as we do, the things around us, well, they disappear. Haruki Murakami

The ones with no imagination are always the quickest to justify themselves Haruki Murakami

Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, then evaporated, leaving only memory. Haruki Murakami

Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere then evaporated, leaving only memory. Haruki Murakami

Along the way I stopped into a coffee shop. All around me normal, everyday city types were going about their normal, everyday affairs. Lovers were whispering to each other, businessmen were poring over spread sheets, college kids were planning their next ski trip and discussing the new Police album. We could have been in any city in Japan. Transplant this coffee shop scene to Yokohama or Fukuoka and nothing would seem out of place. In spite of which -- or, rather, all the more because -- here I was, sitting in this coffee shop, drinking my coffee, feeling a desperate loneliness. I alone was the outsider. I had no place here. Of course, by the same token, I couldn't really say I belonged to Tokyo and its coffee shops. But I had never felt this loneliness there. I could drink my coffee, read my book, pass the time of day without any special thought, all because I was part of the regular scenery. Here I had no ties to anyone. Fact is, I'd come to reclaim myself. . Haruki Murakami

Sitting on the floor, I'd replay the past in my head. Funny, that's all I did, day after day after day for half a year, and I never tired of it. What I'd been through seemed so vast, with so many facets. Vast, but real, very real, which was why the experience persisted in towering before me, like a monument lit up at night. And the thing was, it was a monument to me. Haruki Murakami

Sad hotels existed everywhere, to be sure, but the Dolphin was in a class of its own. The Dolphin Hotel was conceptually sorry. The Dolphin Hotel was tragic. Haruki Murakami

You mean machines are like humans?" I shook my head. "No, not like humans. With machines the feeling is, well, more finite. It doesn't go any further. With humans it's different. The feeling is always changing. Like if you love somebody, the love is always shifting or wavering. It's always questioning or inflating or disappearing or denying or hurting. And the thing is, you can't do anything about it, you can't control it. With my Subaru, it's not so complicated. . Haruki Murakami

Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match. Haruki Murakami

People leave traces of themselves where they feel most comfortable, most worthwhile. Haruki Murakami

Thinking about lunch. Smoked salmon with pedigreed lettuce and razor-sharp slices of onion that have been soaked in ice water, brushed with horseradish and mustard, served on French butter rolls baked in the hot ovens of Kinokuniya. A sandwich made in heaven Haruki Murakami

A moderate silence ensued. A neutral-to-slightly-positive silence. True, silence is still silence, except when you think about it too much. Haruki Murakami

Sometimes I just get tired. I get headaches, and I just lose track. I mean, it's like which is me and which is the role? Where's the line between me and my shadow? Haruki Murakami

A cell is just a room if you don't lock the door. Haruki Murakami

Energies expended on sideshows, never on the main event. Where the hell was the main event? Was there a main event? Haruki Murakami

People die all the time. 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. Personally, I don't buy it." Yuki leaned against the car door. "But that's real hard, isn't it?" she said." Real hard, " I said. "But it's worth trying for. Haruki Murakami

It seemed unreasonable, unfair, that a woman so young and beautiful should be so exhausted. Of course, it was neither unreasonable nor unfair. Exhaustion pays no mind to age and beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods. Haruki Murakami

All you have to do is wait. Sit tight and wait for the right moment. Not try to change anything by force, just watch the drift of things. Make an effort to cast a fair eye on everything. If you do that, you just naturally know what to do. But everyone's always too busy. They're too talented, their schedules are too full. They're too interested in themselves to think about what's fair. Haruki Murakami

Like boarding a train running parallel. That's what disappearing is. Haruki Murakami

...no matter how advanced the system, no matter how precise, unless we have the will to communicate, there's no connection. And even supposing the will is there, there are times like now when we don't know the other party's number. Or even if we know the number, we misdial. Haruki Murakami

Ships passing in broad daylight. Haruki Murakami

You live by yourself for a stretch of time and you get to staring at different objects. Sometimes you talk to yourself. You take meals in crowded joints. You develop an intimate relationship with your used Subaru. You slowly but surely become a has-been. Haruki Murakami

The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night. Haruki Murakami

The world is full of ways and means to waste time Haruki Murakami

It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck. Haruki Murakami

I'm your phantom dance partner. I'm your shadow. I'm not anything more. Haruki Murakami

I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all. Haruki Murakami

We're on the same wavelength. We're connected that way, even if I'm away from her. Haruki Murakami

I just got my signals crossed. First thing, I have to untangle the connections. Otherwise, I come away empty-handed. Or with someone else's hands. Or even with a missing hand. Haruki Murakami