Norwegian Wood By Haruki Murakami : The Best Quotes About Love, Life And Death

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Just finished this book last month and this book made a little space in my heart. just loved the way Murakami beautifully written this book. This is my third book of Murakami and just like all his novels It does leave you a lot of questions especially if you are an overthinker like me.

Norwegian wood is a haunting, absorbing, poetic beautifully written love story set in late 1960’s Japan and named after the Beatles song. This story is about a boy Toru Watanabe who recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire – to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.

This book has something in it that can’t be expressed in words. Murakami literally transports you to Tokyo. It’s magical! Unknowingly I fell in love with it.

I will not recommend this book for first time reader of Murakami. Try Sputnik sweetheart Or Kafka On The Shore to begin with. I would recommend this book to someone who is open-minded and who loves to read romance genre because it’s a love story.

While reading Norwegian wood I highlight some of my favorite lines as they beautifully explain the concept of love, life and death. which is I think is worth sharing.

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The Best Quotes About Love, Life And Death from “Norwegian wood”

Loving another person is a wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself.

I’m not very good at putting my feelings into words. That’s why people misunderstand me.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn’t give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. The scenery was the last thing on my mind.


I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.


What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.

When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it.

People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.

Just speak your mind honestly. That’s the best thing. It may hurt a little sometimes, and someone may get upset, but in the long run, it’s for the best.

What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?…the thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow.

Don’t you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go someplace where you don’t know a soul? Sometimes I feel like doing that. I really really want to do it sometimes.

With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.

What happens when people open their hearts?
They get better.

But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.

Nobody likes being alone that much. I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.

No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning.

Letters are just pieces of paper,” I said. “Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt.

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2 comments

  1. An interesting discussion is worth comment. I think that you should write more on this topic, it might not be a taboo subject but generally people are not enough to speak on such topics. To the next. Cheers

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