top of page
"I watched the moon alone, unable to share his cold beauty with anyone."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Solitude quotes

"I had gotten so used to being alone, but never entirely used to it. Never used to it enough to stop wanting the alternative."

"A: But why this solitude? - B: I am not at odds with anyone. But when I am alone I seem to see my friends in a clearer and fairer light than when I am with them; and when I loved and appreciated music the most, I lived far from it. It seems I need a distant perspective if I am to think well of things."

"When you want to be alone, even few people around you will seem like a tremendous crowd to you!"

"When you understand that through the power of conversion in solitude you can become great, so many things you've been wasting your time on will no longer interest you. You will even run away from some friends."

"Without solitude, we are overwhelmed by all the things we hope to do and all of the things we hope to do and all of the things we are planning and praying to do but we never really have the time to actually get down and get these things done."

"An excellent man he has no enemies and none of his friends like him."

"That illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel in your own mind someone has been there before you - - is all an illusion. We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable."

"I live alone," he said simply. "I live in the open. I hear the waves at night and see the black patterns of the pine boughs against the sky. With sound and silence and color and solitude, of course I see visions. Anyone would.""But you don't believe in them?" Doc asked hopefully."I don't find it a matter for belief or disbelief," the seer said. "You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks into the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself everytime that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it? Don't you see visions?""No," said Doc."
Explore more quotes by Haruki Murakami

"Their hearts, lost in thought, slowly tick away time. When we pass each other on the road, we listen to the rhythm of each other's breathing, and sense the way the other person is ticking away the moments."

"When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. 'Mythomania' is the word for it."

"I had several girlfriends, but nothing lasted. I'd date one for a few months, and then start thinking: This isn't what I want."

"Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane."

"If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever-something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen."

"But still," Ayumi said, "it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.""You may be right," Aomame said, "But it's too late to trade it in for another one."

"When you are used to the kind of life -of never getting anything you want- you stop knowing what it is you want."

"In the novelist's profession, as far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as winning or losing. Maybe numbers of copies sold, awards won, and critics' praise serve as outward standards for accomplishment in literature, but none of them really matter. What's crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you've set for yourself. Failure to reach that bar is not something you can easily explain away. When it comes to other people, you can always come up with a reasonable explanation, but you can't fool yourself. In this sense, writing novels and running full marathons are very much alike."

"Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It is like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. Things will go where they are supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it is time for them to be hurt. Life is like that."
bottom of page