Quotes By Haruki Murakami

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don't think so... I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

If you cannot concentrate, you are not so happy.

It's true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose.

Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual.

Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished.

Writing is fun - at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That's easy to manage.

If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

I don't want to express my opinion about actual politics, because if I do, I have to be responsible for my decision.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I'm still awake. I can continue yesterday's dream today, something you can't normally do in everyday life.

Many people tell me that they don 't know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That's good.

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.

I'm not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years. I don't get bored.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories - not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father's generation. It's a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm just a guy who can write.

When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

I collect records. And cats. I don't have any cats right now. But if I'm taking a walk and I see a cat, I'm happy.

I'm kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I'm always hot.

There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.

I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you'd quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it's not imagination. It's just a way of watching.