Haruki Murakami say thanks.

Haruki Murakami has won the 2009 Jerusalem Prize, Israel’s highest literary honor for foreign writers, according to an Agence France Presse report. “The 60-year-old accepted the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society from Israeli President Shimon Peres at the opening of the international book fair in Jerusalem late on Sunday.”

The ceremony was a rare sighting of the famously reclusive author. The Jerusalem Post reported on his acceptance speech: “I was warned from coming here because of the fighting in Gaza. I asked myself: Is visiting Israel the proper thing to do? Will I be supporting one side?”

“I gave it some thought. And I decided to come. Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I’m told. It’s in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can’t trust anything they haven’t seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. So I chose to see. I chose to speak here rather than say nothing. So here is what I have come to say.”

“If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg.”

Murakami then went on to elaborate, “We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs,” he urged. “We have no hope against the wall: it’s too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us — create who we are. It is we who created the system.”

The Post went on to say, “Murakami, his message delivered, closed by thanking his readership — a special thing indeed from a man who does not make a habit of accepting awards in person. ‘I am grateful to you, Israelis, for reading my books. I hope we are sharing something meaningful. You are the biggest reason why I am here.'”