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Haruki Murakami Quotes

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Famous Haruki Murakami Quotes

“All the same, writing honestly is very difficult. The more I try to be honest, the farther my words sink into darkness.”

Writing Honesty

Book:Hear the Wind Sing

Source: Hear the Wind Sing

“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. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009)”

Writing Truth Novelists Writers

Author:Haruki Murakami

“You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you'll expand the limits of what you're able to do. Almost imperceptibly you'll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner's physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee the results will come.”

Writing Running Focus Patience Endurance

Book:What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“Writing a novel is like having a dream.”

Writing Dream Novel Haruki Murakami

Author:Haruki Murakami

“In the end, writing a story isn't a means of self-therapy, it's nothing more than a meager attempt at self-therapy.”

Writing Self Therapy

Book:Hear the Wind Sing

Source: Hear the Wind Sing

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

Writing Despair Insightful

Book:Hear the Wind Sing

Source: Hear the Wind Sing

“If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings.”

Writing Talent Youth Page 80

Book:What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.”

Writing Flying Prose Butterflies Descriptive

Book:1Q84

Source: 1Q84

“It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

Writing

Book:Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky.”

Writing Running

Book:What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn't make it a living breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.”

Writing

Book:Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.”

Love Writing Dream

Book:After the Quake

Source: After the Quake

“If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.”

Writing Sex

Book:Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?”

Writing Memories Memory Nostalgia Forgetting

Book:Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.”

Writing Letters

Book:A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

“That's how it is with art. Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning are incapable of such writing.”

Writing Art

Book:Hear the Wind Sing

Source: Hear the Wind Sing

“You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.”

Writing

Book:1Q84

Source: 1Q84

“I write weird stories. I don't know why I like weirdness so much. Myself, I'm a very realistic person. I don't trust anything New Age -- or reincarnation, dreams, Tarot, horoscopes. I don't trust anything like that at all. I wake up at 6 in the morning and go to bed at 10, jogging every day and swimming, eating healthy food. I'm very realistic. But when I write, I write weird. That's very strange. When I'm getting more and more serious, I'm getting more and more weird. When I want to write about the reality of society and the world, it gets weird. Many people ask me why, and I can't answer that. But I recognized when I was interviewing those 63 ordinary people -- they were very straightforward, very simple, very ordinary, but their stories were sometimes very weird. That was interesting.”

Writing Weird

Author:Haruki Murakami

“I love pop culture -- the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That's why I said I don't like elitism.”

Writing Reading Pop Culture Elitism Literary References

Author:Haruki Murakami

“My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart...”

Writing Short Stories

Author:Haruki Murakami

“I believe that I have not been fair to you and that, as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply. In doing so, however, I have led myself around in circles and hurt myself just as deeply. I say this not as an excuse or a means of self-justification but because it is true. If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. So please try not to hate me. I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed being than you realize. Which is precisely why I do not want you to hate me. Because if you were to do that, I would really go to pieces. I can't do what you can do: I can't slip inside my shell and wait for things to pass. I don't know for a fact that you are really like that, but sometimes you give me that impression. I often envy that in you, which may be why I led you around in circles so much. This may be an over-analytical way of looking at things. Don't you agree? The therapy they perform here is certainly not over-analytical, but when you are under treatment for several months the way I am here, like it or not, you become more or less analytical. "This was caused by that, and that means this, because of which such-and-such." Like that. I can't tell whether this kind of analysis is trying to simplify the world or complicate it. In any case, I myself feel that I am far closer to recovery than I once was, and people here tell me this is true. This is the first time in a long while I have been able to sit down and calmly write a letter. The one I wrote you in July was something I had to squeeze out of me (though, to tell the truth, I don't remember what I wrote - was it terrible?), but this time I am very calm. How wonderful it is to be able to write someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like this is truly marvellous. Of course, once I do put them to words, I find I can only express a fraction of what I want to say, but that's all right. I'm happy just to be able to feel I want to write to someone. And so I am writing to you.”

Writing Regret Circles Analysis

Book:Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

About the Author

Known for: Author
Quotes: 1077

Books & Sources

Norwegian WoodRelated source material

Kafka on the ShoreRelated source material

1Q84Related source material

The Wind-Up Bird ChronicleRelated source material

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the WorldRelated source material

Sputnik SweetheartRelated source material

South of the Border, West of the SunRelated source material

Dance Dance DanceRelated source material

What I Talk About When I Talk About RunningRelated source material

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of PilgrimageRelated source material

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