Haruki Murakami Quotes

Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering—this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

Guilt is the very nerve of sorrow.

The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their neglect.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

My soul is dark with stormy riot: directly traced over to diet.

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.

I understand the power of sorrow, and I understand how far it can take us from ourselves if we let it.

There was a sentence in your letter that struck me, “I wish I were far away from everything, I am the cause of all, and bring only sorrow to everybody, I alone have brought all this misery on myself and others.” These words struck me because that same feeling, just the same, not more nor less, is also on my conscience.

When I'm in pain and grief and despair, my throat is clenched and my heart hurts.

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain

Now those memories come back to haunt me they haunt me like a curse.

The pain of the flesh is naught to that of the heart

She'd never imagined it like this-when she thought of someone (a woman like herself)losing her mind, she'd imagined shrieks and wails, hallucinations; but at that moment it had seemed clear that there was another way, far quieter; a way that was numb and hopeless, flat, so much so that an emotion as strong as sorrow would have been a relief.

My greatest affliction... is perhaps the major theme of my writings, the affliction of loneliness that follows me like a shadow, a very ponderous shadow too heavy to drag after me all of my days and nights.

I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

But it's far too late for us; ring, hair, letters, photographs - all traces of our love will be scattered then, like an anagram.

She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters.

One really ought to be afraid of self-torture. But it tempted me. It begged. The dark place that my mind was fast becoming blends, in my memory, with the dark womb of church: the chant, the fugue of prayer, the strange erotic energy that carving a very small cross into my thigh with a nail had brought.

For always in her there was a dark place full of despair and a great dividing force to make meaning because there was none.

In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows But my sorrows they learned to swim

Sometimes I lie awake at night and think about that little red-haired girl... I don't ever want to forget her face, but if I don't forget her face, I'll go crazy... How can I remember the face I can't forget? Suddenly I'm writing country western music!

It will affect me in ways I can't even begin to get my mind around. This day is a dark crater. There is no room for songs. The songs are wrong. Every song is wrong. And I don't know what to do without music.