By 10 Enlightening Haruki Murakami Quotes To Light Up The Left Side of Your Brain
image by Maria Castelló Solbes//flickr
Haruki Murakami is a creative genius whose literary works are filled with beautiful insights that can be applied to our crazy world of creative churn and burn. We’ve compiled and repurposed our 10 favorite Haruki Murakami Quotes for those times when your creative side needs a little reminder. Enjoy, hams!
1. For those long nights…
“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.” -Haruki Murakami
2. When you’re playing it safe to avoid criticism…
“If you do anything out of the ordinary, you can be sure someone, somewhere, will get upset.” -Haruki Murakami (may we add: do it anyways)
3. Or when you’re playing it safe to be politically correct…
“The more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive.” -Haruki Murakami
4. For the times you’re waiting on that promotion…
“Life is not like water. Things in life don’t necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.” -Haruki Murakami
5. Or when you want to hide away from the world…
“Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.” -Haruki Murakami
6. For that “straightforward” creative brief…
“Please remember: things are not what they seem.” -Haruki Murakami
7. To remind us of what a great idea really is…
“As time goes on, you’ll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn’t, doesn’t.” -Haruki Murakami
8. To inspire a different approach to storytelling…
“Not all guns have to be fired. A pistol is just a tool and where I am living is not a story book world. It’s a real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.” -Haruki Murakami
10. And to discourage groupthink…
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” -Haruki Murakami
9. Lastly, this gem on the power of words…
“It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.” -Haruki Murakami
