“Like dry ground welcoming the rain, he let the solitude, silence, and loneliness soak in.”
-Men Without Women quotes by Haruki Murakami
“So in the end maybe that’s the challenge: to look inside your own heart as perceptively and seriously as you can, and to make peace with what you find there. If we hope to truly see another person, we have to start by looking within ourselves.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“Whether you want to or not. But the place you return to is always slightly different from the place you left. That’s the rule. It can never be exactly the same.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“Music has that power to revive memories, sometimes so intensely that they hurt.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“There were times he thought it would have been far better to never have known. Yet he continued to return to his core principle: that, in every situation, knowledge was better than ignorance. However agonizing, it was necessary to confront the facts. Only through knowing could a person become strong.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“Women are all born with a special, independent organ that allows them to lie.”
-Men Without Women quotes by Haruki Murakami
“When I thought of how I’d been living, how I’d been approaching life, it was all so trite, so miserably pointless. Unimaginative middle-class rubbish, and I wanted to gather it all up and stuff it away in some drawer. Or else light it on fire and watch it go up in smoke (though what kind of smoke it would emit I had no idea).”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“When I should have felt real pain, I stifled it. I didn’t want to take it on, so I avoided facing up to it. Which is why my heart is so empty now.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“Tobacco’s a killer,” Kafuku said. “Being alive is a killer, if you think about it,” Misaki said.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“One day, I lost sight of her. I happened to glance away for a moment, and when I turned back, she had disappeared.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“I need to learn not just to forget but to forgive.”
-Men Without Women quotes by Haruki Murakami
“Dreams are the kind of things you can—when you need to—borrow and lend out.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“The scene seemed somehow divorced from reality, although reality, he knew, could at times be terribly unreal.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“I’m human, after all. I was hurt. But whether it was a lot or a little I can’t say.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“Some people are polite, and some are quick. Each one’s a good quality to have, but most of the time quickness trumps politeness.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“That’s what we all do : endlessly take the long way around.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“It was as if he felt that the black symbols flowing from his brush onto the pure white paper could somehow lay bare the workings of his heart.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“I’ve been out with lots of woman who are much prettier than her, better built, with better taste, and more intelligent. But those comparisons are meaningless.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“Can any of us ever perfectly understand another person? However much we may love them?”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“I forgot my eraser,” I told her, “so if you have an extra, could you let me borrow it?” She took her eraser, broke it in two, and gave me half. And smiled broadly. Like the saying goes, in that instant I fell in love.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“For some reason, it often rained on the nights they met, and this night was no exception – a thin drizzle was falling outside.”
-Men Without Women quotes by Haruki Murakami
“I have to somehow get connected to reality again, he thought, or else I won’t be me anymore. I’ll become a man who doesn’t exist.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“The absence of conversation didn’t bother Kafuku. He wasn’t good at small talk. While he didn’t dislike talking to people he knew well about things that mattered, he otherwise preferred to remain silent.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“I don’t want to overestimate myself. Basically I’ve been lucky. I’m simply a polite, lucky man. That might be the best way to think of it.”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
“Life is strange, isn’t it? You can be totally entranced by the glow of something one minute, be willing to sacrifice everything to make it yours, but then a little time passes, or your perspective changes a bit, and all of a sudden you’re shocked at how faded it appears. What was I looking at?”
-Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
