Quotes from Haruki Murakami

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 people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

I'm not intelligent. I'm not arrogant. I'm just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn't want to become a writer - it just happened.

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.

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

Sometimes I wonder why I'm a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I'm a successful writer.

I could have been a cult writer if I'd kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

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

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.

It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.

Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light.

What do you think? I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love.

The grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls.

I think of myself as more the non-turn-on type. so when I do get turned on, I don't trust it, I have to investigate the source.

How much do you love me?' Midori asked. 'Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter,' I said.

For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly. From something like that or it doesnt begin at all.

What we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with.

In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.

Love with complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind.

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.

Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.

Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive.

She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.