Quote of the day by Haruki Murakami: 'When you are used to never getting anything you want, you stop knowing what it is you want' - How repeated disappointment can make you forget your own dreams

Repeated disappointment in life can do more than just making a person unhappy. Over time, it can make it difficult to recognise what would bring them happiness in the first place. Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has explored this idea through a character who describes what happens when a life of unfulfilled wishes becomes the norm through repeated experiences. His quote, “When you are used to the kind of life -of never getting anything you want- you stop knowing what it is you want”, comes from his acclaimed novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

What does Haruki Murakami’s quote mean?

The quote tells us how when someone does not get what they want again and again, they eventually just stop expecting things to work out at all for them. Rather than still wishing for something and then again getting disappointed, they begin to suppress their desires completely.

Eventually, this can become a habit and a person who once knew what they wanted may find it difficult to identify their ambitions, preferences or hopes at all.


Murakami’s words also suggest that accepting disappointment as inevitable can change how people see their possibilities also. What begins as a response to circumstances can gradually influence their expectations of themselves and the world around them.

This quote of the day is from Murakami’s novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle which was published in three parts between 1994 and 1995.

In the full passage, Creta Kano, a character who has been described as a medium, remembers always wanting a cat as a child but never getting one because her mother hated cats.

What is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle about?

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a story about Toru Okada, a 30-year-old former lawyer's assistant, whose ordinary life in Tokyo takes a turn in the plot after his cat disappears. His wife Kumiko also begins to grow distant from him and a series of weird phone calls and encounters drag him into even more disturbing situations.

About Haruki Murakami

Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan on January 12, 1949 and is an internationally acclaimed novelist, short-story writer and translator. In his works that were fiction, Murakami used to combine ordinary story settings with surreal events, which made the readers reconsider the boundaries between reality, memory and imagination.

His best-known works include Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and 1Q84. His style of storytelling has helped him gain a worldwide readership and his novels have been translated into numerous languages.