Identity Quote by Haruki Murakami

““No two human beings are alike; it's a question of identity. And what is identity? The cognitive system arisin' from the aggregate memories of that individual's past experiences. The layman's word for this is the mind. Not two human beings have the same mind. At the same time, human beings have almost no grasp of their own cognitive systems. I don't, you don't, nobody does. All we know—or think we know—is but a fraction of the whole cake. A mere tip of the icing.””

Haruki Murakami

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.0 out of 5 (10 ratings)

More by Haruki Murakami

I always feel like I'm struggling to become someone else. Like I'm trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life,…

Haruki Murakami

Image

If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.

Haruki Murakami

Image

“The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too soon needed ten, then thirty, thena full minute...”

Haruki Murakami

Image

“Intelligent teenage girls were often instinctively theatrical, purposely eccentric, mouthing highly suggestive words to confuse people.”

Haruki Murakami

Image

Memory is like fiction; or else it's fiction that's like memory. This really came home to me once I started writing fiction, that memory seemd a kind of fiction, or vice versa. Either way, no matter how hard you try to put everything neatly into shape, the context wanders this way and that, until finally the context isn't even there…

Haruki Murakami

The most dangerous creature here would have to be me. So maybe I'm just scared of my own shadow.

Haruki Murakami

Image

If you listen to the radio for a whole hour there's maybe one decent song. The rest is mass-produced garbage

Haruki Murakami

Image

“that one of our problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own deformities”

Haruki Murakami

Image

“When I look back at myself at age twenty, what I remember most is being alone and lonely. I had no girlfriend to warm my body or my soul, no friends I could open up to. No clue what I should do every day, no vision for the future. For the most part, I remained hidden away, deep within myself.…

Haruki Murakami

“There's not a branch of publishing or broadcasting that doesn't depend in some way on advertising. It'd be like an aquarium without water. Why,…

Haruki Murakami

Image

“One by one, I'll face the tasks before me and complete them as best I can. Focusing on each stride forward, but at the same time taking a long-range view, scanning the scenery as far ahead as I can. I am, after all, a long distance runner. My time, the rank I attain, my outward appearance - all of these…

Haruki Murakami

“Eleven o'clock had come and gone. I had to find a way to bring this conversation to a successful conclusion and get out of there. But before I could say anything, she suddenly asked me to hold her. 'Why?' I asked, caught off guard. 'To charge my batteries,' she said. 'Charge your batteries?' 'My body has run out of electricity.…

Haruki Murakami

Explore all 2,930 Haruki Murakami quotes

More Identity quotes

I don't doubt that straight white men have identity issues and identity complexes and struggle with defining themselves.

Justin Simien

Image

In the hearing world, I'm constantly having to lip-read and trying to understand what's going on. Sign language is so beautiful. It gives you…

Rose Ayling-Ellis

Image

I think the next 50 years are going to present the human race with challenges that so far exceed the limitations of geopolitical boundaries or nationalist identity. We're going to be up against challenges that we can barely fathom at this point. So how we embrace them and deal with them will define a great many things about where we…

Zachary Quinto

You have expressive nationalism, I mean very identity driven, which shaped each other a lot of that in the Middle East.

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar

Image

Family over friends, because real friends are family

Anonymous

Image

I think everybody, or the great majority of human beings, have this aspiration to become other: to live a different identity, at least for…

Mario Vargas Llosa

Image

The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We…

S. I. Hayakawa

Image

Tell me how much a nation knows about its own language, and I will tell you how much that nation knows about its own…

John Ciardi

Image

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone…

Orson Scott Card

“In the worldly life, due to maadakta (intoxication of the ego of ‘I am Chandubhai’), one has completely lost awareness of everything about one’s self. Everything in the worldly life is nothing but intoxication. The food is intoxicating, the senses are intoxicating. [Therefore] Go to the one, who is without mada (pride), the one who has destroyed all intoxication. There…

Dada Bhagwan