Quotes By Haruki Murakami

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.

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.

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

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.

I don't get bored.

I have always liked running, so it wasn't particularly difficult to make it a habit. All you need is a pair of running shoes and you can do it anywhere. It does not require anybody to do it with, and so I found the sport perfectly fits me as a person who tends to be independent and individualistic.

In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness.

I used to run a full marathon in three hours and 25 or 26 minutes. Not any more.

It's physical. If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It's a parallel thing in me.

Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.

I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It's like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

I didn't read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature, I just wanted to do something else.