Haruki Murakami Quotes

I am who I am, you are who you are, and everything else is a perception based on acceptance, deception, smoke, mirrors, and so on. It's what's between us that seems to justify our accidental identities.

I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don't.

I’m not anything that you think I am.

Previously, even in Egypt, men had not learned to see straight. They fumbled in the dark, and didn't quite know where they were, or what they were. Like men in a dark room, they only felt their existence surging in the darkness of other creatures. We, however, have learned to see ourselves for what we are, as the sun sees us. The Kodak bears witness.

People create the sort of myths they want to believe about themselves.

Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.

All of us... when we think we are talking most intimately to someone else, are actually addressing an image we have of the person to whom we believe we speak.

The very act of thinking about power in our lives and experiences creates a process of revelation and self-analysis that may even make us look at ourselves in a new light... thinking about power and its complex manifestations may not simply lead to a better understanding of the abstract complexities of society, but may have an effect on one?s own image and identity. Perhaps a warning label should be placed on the cover.

We live our lives based on who we think we are.

I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.

Each person tells you who they think they are, and who they think you are.

Don't think you are looking at me because you are not.

People have different impressions of themselves, and where reality lies is somewhere in between.

I have to live in the truth that this is who I am. That's what I need to focus on.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see the real you, or what you have been conditioned to believe is you? The two are so, so different. One is an infinite consciousness capable of being and creating whatever it chooses, the other is an illusion imprisoned by its own perceived and programmed limitations.

I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.

We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!'

Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.

If I'm gonna tell a real story, I'm gonna start with my name.

There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge.

The most important tool of my trade was a mirror.

If you look at all the notions we accept about who we are, you find that they are all based upon our perceptual experiences.

You're who you think you are, even if you never admit it to yourself or to anyone else. You may be in the worst position to judge, but you're in the best position to know.