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Everyone Just Keeps On Disappearing. Some Things Vanish, Like They Were Cut Away. Others Fade Slowly Into The Mist. And All That Remains Is A Desert.
-Haruki Murakami
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Everyone Just Keeps On

Haruki Murakami
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Everyone Just Keeps On Disappearing. Some Things Vanish, Like They Were Cut Away. Others Fade Slowly Into The Mist. And All That Remains Is A Desert.

Understanding the Quote: "everyone just keeps on disappearing. some things vanish, like they were cut..."

This quote by Haruki Murakami reflects deeply on the theme of cutting. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Cutting, Desert, Disappear, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Haruki Murakami interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami is celebrated for insightful thoughts on cutting and desert. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Cutting
Desert
Disappear
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Weight
Matter
It's Not Right For One Friend To Do All The Giving And The Other To Do All The Taking: That's Not Real Friendship.
Giving
One Friend
There’s Nothing Wrong With Not Looking Like Something. It Just Means You Don’t Fit The Stereotype Yet.
Mean
Fit
Stereotype
Running Taught Me To Have Faith In My Skills As A Writer. I Learned How Much I Can Demand Of Myself, When I Need A Break, And When The Break Starts To Get Too Long. I Known How Hard I Am Allowed To Push Myself.
Running
Skills
Long
I Often Recall These Words When I Am Writing, And I Think To Myself, “it’s True. There Aren’t Any New Words. Our Job Is To Give New Meanings And Special Overtones To Absolutely Ordinary Words.” I Find The Thought Reassuring. It Means That Vast, Unknown Stretches Still Lie Before Us, Fertile Territories Just Waiting For Us To Cultivate Them.
Jobs
Lying
Writing
The Others In The Dorm Thought I Wanted To Be A Writer, Because I Was Always Alone With A Book, But I Had No Such Ambition. There Was Nothing I Wanted To Be.
Book
Ambition
Dorms
I Have Come To Think That Life Is A Far More Limited Thing Than Those In The Midst Of Its Maelstorm Realize. That Light Shines Into The Act Of Life For Only The Briefest Moment - Perhaps Only A Matter Of Seconds. Once It Is Gone And Failed To Grasp Its Offered Revelation, There Is No Second Chance. One May Have To Live The Rest Of One's Life In Hopeless Depth Of Loneliness And Remorse. In That Twilight World, One Can No Longer Look Forward To Anything. All That Such A Person Holds In His Hands Is The Withered Corpse Of What Should Have Been.
Loneliness
Twilight
Thinking
A Story Is Not Something Of This World. A Real Story Requires A Kind Of Magical Baptism To Link The World On This Side With The World On The Other Side.
Real
Baptism
Stories
So For All That We Might Speak Words In Each Other's Vicinity, This Could Never Develop Into Anything That Could Be Called A Conversation. It Was As Though We Were Speaking In Different Languages. If The Dalai Lama Were On His Deathbed And The Jazz Musician Eric Dolphy Were To Try To Explain To Him The Importance Of Choosing One's Engine Oil In Accordance With Changes In The Sound Of The Bass Clarinet, That Exchange Might Have Been More Worthwhile And Effective Than My Conversations With Noboru Wataya.
Oil
Trying
Musician
In Other Words, Let's Face It: Life Is Basically Unfair. But Even In A Situation That's Unfair, I Think It's Possible To Seek Out A Kind Of Fairness. Of Course, That Might Take Time And Effort. And Maybe It Won't Seem To Be Worth All That. It's Up To Each Individual To Decide Whether Or Not It Is.
Thinking
Effort
Might
Two People Can Sleep In The Same Bed And Still Be Alone When They Close Their Eyes
Life
Sleep
Eye
I’ve Never Once Thought About How I Was Going To Die,” She Said. “i Can’t Think About It. I Don’t Even Know How I’m Going To Live.
Thinking
Said
Dies
No Matter What The Situation May Be, I Still Take Pleasure In Witnessing The Joy Of Others.
Joy
May
Matter
I Had My Jazz Club And I Had Enough Money. So I Didn't Have To Write For My Living.
Writing
Clubs
Had Enough
I Wasn't Particularly Afraid Of Death Itself. As Shakespeare Said, Die This Year And You Don't Have To Die The Next.
Years
Next
Said
What We Needed Were Not Words And Promises But A Steady Accumulation Of Small Realities.
Life
Reality
Promise
It Is My Huge Pleasure That My Novels Are Translated Into Languages That Are Read Among Small Numbers Of People.
Small Numbers
People
Language
When You Are Used To The Kind Of Life -of Never Getting Anything You Want- You Stop Knowing What It Is You Want.
Knowing
Want
Kind
In Certain Areas Of My Life, I Actively Seek Out Solitude. Especially For Someone In My Line Of Work, Solitude Is, More Or Less, An Inevitable Circumstance. Sometimes, However, This Sense Of Isolation, Like Acid Spilling Out Of A Bottle, Can Unconsciously Eat Away At A Person's Heart And Dissolve It. You Could See It, Too, As A Kind Of Double-edged Sword. It Protects Me, But At The Same Time Steadily Cuts Away At Me From The Inside.
Heart
Cutting
Solitude
Animals That Not Only Move By Their Own Free Will And Share Feelings With People But Also Possess Sight And Hearing Qualify As Deserving Of Names.
Moving
Animal
Sight
I've Been Lonely For So Long. And I've Been Hurt So Deeply. If Only I Could Have Met You Again A Long Time Ago, Then I Wouldn't Have Had To Take All These Detours To Get Here.' Tengo Shook His Head. 'i Don't Think So. This Way Is Just Fine. This Is Exactly The Right Time. For Both Of Us. [...] We Needed That Much Time.... To Understand How Lonely We Really Were.
Lonely
Hurt
Thinking
...most People In The World Don't Really Use Their Brains To Think. And People Who Don't Think Are The Ones Who Don't Listen To Others.
Thinking
People
Brain
Until The Bitter End, The Emptiness Inside Her Was Hers Alone.
Numbness
Emptiness
Bitter
Between The Time The Last Train Leaves And The First Train Arrives, The Place Changes: It's Not The Same As In Daytime.
Lasts
Firsts
Daytime
An Unhealthy Soul Requires A Healthy Body.
Healthy
Soul
Body
My Heroes Don't Have Anything Special. They Have Something To Tell Other People But They Don't Know How, So They Talk To Themselves.
Hero
People
Special
It Is A Lonely Life Sometimes, Like Throwing A Stone Into The Deep Darkness. It Might Hit Something, But You Can’t See It. The Only Thing You Can Do Is To Guess, And To Believe.
Lonely
Believe
Darkness
Ever Since Time Began (when Was That, I Wonder?), It's Been Moving Ever Forward Without A Moment's Rest. And One Of The Privileges Given To Those Who've Avoided Dying Young Is The Blessed Right To Grow Old.
Moving
Blessed
Dying
This Is The Extent Of His Knowledge Of The Sea: It Was Very Big, It Was Salty, And Fish Lived There.
Sea
Bigs
Fishes
The Things She Most Wanted To Tell Him Would Lose Their Meaning The Moment She Put Them Into Words.
Moments
Wanted
Most Wanted
I Hate Requests. They Make Me Feel Unhappy. It's Like When I Take A Book Out Of The Library. As Soon As I Start To Read It, All I Can Think About Is When I'll Finish It.
Hate
Book
Thinking
Give Yourself Five Minutes To Consider How You Can Turn A Miserable Situation To Your Benefit And That Light Bulb Is Going To Click On.
Light
Giving
Benefits
He Sometimes Wondered If She Had Become Involved With Him Just So That She Could Cry In Someone's Arms. Maybe She Can't Cry Alone, And That's Why She Needs Me.
Needs
Arms
Sometimes
You Can Keep As Quiet As You Like, But One Of These Days Somebody Is Going To Find You.
Life
Quiet
These Days
The Body Is Not The Only Target Of Rape. Violence Does Not Always Take A Visible Form, And Not All Wounds Gush Blood.
Blood
Doe
Target
Being Alive, If You Had To Define It, Meant Emitting A Variety Of Smells.
Smell
Alive
Variety
I Wander Though China. Without Ever Having Boarded A Plane. My Travels Take Place Here In The Tokoyo Subways, In The Backseat Of A Taxi... All Of A Sudden This City Will Start To Go. In A Flash, The Buildings Will Crumble. Over The Tokyo Streets Will Fall My China, Like Ash, Leaching Into Everything It Touches. Slowly, Gradually, Until Nothing Remains. No, This Isn't A Place For Me.
Fall
Cities
Ashes
We Fell Silent Again. The Thing We Had Shared Was Nothing More Than A Fragment Of Time That Had Died Longe Ago.even So, A Faint Glimmer Of That Warm Memory Still Claimed A Part Of My Heart. And When Death Claim Me, No Doubt I Would Walk Along By That Faint Light In The Brief Instant Before Being Flung Once Again Into The Abyss Of Nothingness
Memories
Heart
Light
All I Do Is Keep On Running In My Own Cozy, Homemade Void, My Own Nostalgic Silence. And This Is A Pretty Wonderful Thing. No Matter What Anybody Else Says.
Running
Silence
Cozy
The Most Important Thing We Learn At School Is The Fact That The Most Important Things Can't Be Learned At School.
Life
School
Important
I'll Write To You. A Super-long Letter, Like In An Old-fashioned Novel
Book
Writing
Long
I Used To Run A Full Marathon In Three Hours And 25 Or 26 Minutes. Not Any More.
Running
Three
Marathon
You Have To Be Practical. So Every Time I Say, If You Want To Write A Novel You Have To Be Practical, People Get Bored. They Are Disappointed. They Are Expecting A More Dynamic, Creative, Artistic Thing To Say. What I Want To Say Is: You Have To Be Practical.
Writing
People
Bored
Killing Time Is Not An Easy Job.
Time
Jobs
Killing
I Want You Always To Remember Me. Will You Remember That I Existed, And That I Stood Next To You Here Like This?
Want
Next
Remember
It's Just Like Yeats Said. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. Flip This Around And You Could Say That Where There's No Power To Imagine, No Responsibility Can Arise.
Dream
Responsibility
Flip
People Lose Fifty Million Skin Cells Every Day. The Cells Get Scraped Off And Turn Into Invisible Dust, And Disappear Into The Air. Maybe We Are Nothing But Skin Cells As Far As The World Is Concerned.
Air
Cells
Dust
Where There Is Light, There Must Be Shadow, Where There Is Shadow There Must Be Light. There Is No Shadow Without Light And No Light Without Shadow.... We Do Not Know If The So-called Little People Are Good Or Evil. This Is, In A Sense, Something That Surpasses Our Understanding And Our Definitions. We Have Lived With Them Since Long, Long Ago-- From A Time Before Good And Evil Even Existed, When People's Minds Were Still Benighted.
Light
Long Ago
People
It Is Sometimes Necessary For Each Person. Fill Up With Delicious Food, Get Drunk, Sing Loudly And Chat Frivolously.
Drunk
Sometimes
Delicious Food
You're Afraid Of Imagination And Even More Afraid Of Dreams. Afraid Of The Resposibility That Begins In Dreams. But You Have To Sleep And Dreams Are A Part Of Sleep. When You're Awake You Can Suppress Imagination But You Can't Supress Dreams.
Dream
Sleep
Imagination
There's A Special Feeling You Get On A Veranda That You Just Can't Get Anywhere Else.
Feelings
Special
Whenever I Get Into Something, I Shut Out Everything Else.
Perhaps Most People In The World Aren’t Trying To Be Free, Kafka. They Just Think They Are. It’s All An Illusion. If They Really Were Set Free, Most People Would Be In A Real Pickle. You’d Better Remember That. People Actually Prefer Not Being Free?
Real
Thinking
People
Losing You Is Most Difficult For Me, But The Nature Of My Love For You Is What Matters. If It Distorts Into Half-truth, Then Perhaps It Is Better Not To Love You. I Must Keep My Mind But Loose You.
Love You
What Matters
Mind
Wherever There's Hope There's A Trial.
Trials
No, I Don't Want Your Money. The World Moves Less By Money Than By What You Owe People And What They Owe You. I Don't Like To Owe Anybody Anything, So I Keep To Myself As Much On The Lending Side As I Can.
Moving
People
World
And As The Years Have Passed, The Time Has Grown Longer. The Sad Truth Is That What I Could Recall In Five Seconds All Too Needed Ten, Then Thirty, Then A Full Minute - Like Shadows Lengthening At Dusk. Someday, I Suppose, The Shadows Will Be Swallowed Up In Darkness.
Years
Darkness
Shadow
What I Was Chasing In Circles Must Have Been The Tail Of The Darkness Inside Me.
Circles
Darkness
Tails
What Matters Is Deciding In Your Heart To Accept Another Person Completely. When You Do That, It Is Always The First Time And The Last.
Heart
What Matters
Lasts
Reality Was Utterly Coolheaded And Utterly Lonely.
Lonely
Reality
In His Or Her Own Way, Everyone I Saw Before Me Looked Happy. Whether They Were Really Happy Or Just Looked It, I Couldn't Tell. But They Did Look Happy On This Pleasant Early Afternoon In Late September, And Because Of That I Felt A Kind Of Loneliness New To Me, As If I Were The Only One Here Who Was Not Truly Part Of The Scene.
Loneliness
Looks
Afternoon
Most Young People Were Getting Jobs In Big Companies, Becoming Company Men. I Wanted To Be Individual.
Jobs
Men
People
They Take The Circuits Out Of People’s Brains That Make It Possible For Them To Think For Themselves. Their World Is Like The One That George Orwell Depicted In His Novel. I’m Sure You Realize That There Are Plenty Of People Who Are Looking For Exactly That Kind Of Brain Death. It Makes Life A Lot Easier. You Don’t Have To Think About Difficult Things, Just Shut Up And Do What Your Superiors Tell You To Do.
Thinking
People
Brain
Painful Is The Stress When One Cannot Reproduce Or Convey Vividly To Others, However Hard He Tries, What He's Experienced So Intensely.
Stress
Trying
Painful
To Be Able To Grasp Something Of Value, Sometimes You Have To Perform Seemingly Inefficient Acts.
Able
Sometimes
Values
I'm Scared," She Said. "these Days I Feel Like A Snail Without A Shell." "i'm Scared Too," I Said. "i Feel Like A Frog Without Any Webs." She Looked Up And Smiled. Wordlessly We Walked Over To A Shaded Part Of The Building And Held Each Other And Kissed, A Shell-less Snail And A Webless Frog.
Shells
Frogs
Scared
What Would Tomorrow Bring? I Wondered. Both Hands On The Wheel, I Closed My Eyes. I Didn’t Feel Like I Was In My Own Body; My Body Was Just A Lonely, Temporary Container I Happened To Be Borrowing. What Would Become Of Me Tomorrow I Did Not Know.
Lonely
Eye
Hands
A Certain Type Of Perfection Can Only Be Realized Through A Limitless Accumulation Of The Imperfect.
Perfection
Imperfect
Limitless
Kindness And A Caring Mind Are Two Separate Qualities. Kindness Is Manners. It Is Superficial Custom, An Acquired Practice. Not So The Mind. The Mind Is Deeper, Stronger, And, I Believe, It Is Far More Inconstant.
Kindness
Believe
Caring
Maybe The Only Thing I Can Definitely Say About Is This: That’s Life. Maybe The Only Thing We Can Do Is Accept It, Without Really Knowing What’s Going On.
Knowing
Accepting
Can Do
You Can Hide Memories, But You Can’t Erase The History That Produced Them.
Memories
Erase
Colorless
I'm Tired Of Living Unable To Love Anyone. I Don't Have A Single Friend - Not One. And, Worst Of All, I Can't Even Love Myself. Why Is That? Why Can't I Love Myself? It's Because I Can't Love Anyone Else. A Person Learns How To Love Himself Through The Simple Acts Of Loving And Being Loved By Someone Else. Do You Understand What I Am Saying? A Person Who Is Incapable Of Loving Another Cannot Properly Love Himself.
Tired
Simple
I Love Myself
Wasn't He The One Who Said You Shouldn't Trust Anybody Who Calls Himself An Ordinar Man? - Naoko
Men
Said
It's A Quiet Place, So People Talk Quietly," Said Naoko. She Made A Neat Pile Of Fish Bones At The Edge Of Her Plate And Dabbed At Her Mouth With A Handkerchief. "there's No Need To Raise Your Voice Here. You Don't Have To Convince Anybody Of Anything, And You Don't Have To Attract Anyone's Attention.
Voice
People
Needs
No Matter How Clear Things Might Become In The Forest Of Story, There Was Never A Clear-cut Solution, As There Was In Math. The Role Of A Story Was, In The Broadest Terms, To Transpose A Problem Into Another Form. Depending On The Nature And The Direction Of The Problem, A Solution Might Be Suggested In The Narrative. Tengo Would Return To The Real World With That Solution In Hand. It Was Like A Piece Of Paper Bearing The Indecipherable Text Of A Magic Spell. It Served No Immediate Practical Purpose, But It Contained A Possibility.
Real
Cutting
Math
Reality's Just The Accumulation Of Ominous Prophecies Come To Life. All You Have To Do Is Open A Newspaper On Any Given Day To Weigh The Good News Versus The Bad News, And You'll See What I Mean.
Mean
Reality
News
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