Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakamiis a contemporary Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside his native country. The critical acclaim for his fiction and non-fiction has led to numerous awards, in Japan and internationally, including the World Fantasy Awardand the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. His oeuvre received, for example, the Franz Kafka Prizeand the Jerusalem Prize...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 January 1949
CountryJapan
Exerting yourself to the limit over and over again, that is the essence of running. Running is painful, but the pain doesn't leave me, I can take care of it. That agrees with my mentality.
I've never met a girl who thinks like you." "A lot of people tell me that," she said, digging at a cuticle. "But it's the only way I know how to think. Seriously. I'm just telling you what I believe. It's never crossed my mind that my way of thinking is different from other people's. I'm not trying to be different. But when I speak out honestly, everybody thinks I'm kidding or playacting. When that happens, I feel like everything is such a pain!
Painful is the stress when one cannot reproduce or convey vividly to others, however hard he tries, what he's experienced so intensely.
my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and waiting for it to pass. And it would pass -- but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.
The years nineteen and twenty are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older.
I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt but I was wrong.
Once you let yourself grow close to someone, cutting the ties could be painful.
In most cases learning something essential in life requires physical pain.
It’s precisely because of the pain, the we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it.
Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from.
A life without pain: it was the very thing I had dreamed of for years, but now that I had it, I couldn’t find a place for myself within it. A clear gap separated me from it, and this caused me great confusion. I felt as if I were not anchored to this world - this world that I had hated so passionately until then; this world that I had continued to revile for its unfairness and injustice; this world where at least I knew who I was. Now the world ceased to be the world, and I had ceased to be me.
I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas - if I like these things, why should I apologize?
I contented myself with whiskey, for medicinal purposes. It helped numb my various aches and pains. Not that the alcohol actually reduced the pain; it just gave the pain a life of its own, apart from mine.
This is no honky-tonk parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon.