Haruki Murakami Quotes

The essential truth is that sometimes you're worried that they'll find out it's a fluke, that you don't really have it. You've lost the muse or - the worst dread - you never had it at all. I went through all that madness early on.

I feel at times that I'm making up these little people and I've lost my mind.

Production is something I've never come to terms with.

Every single time I start to do a picture, without fail, I feel as if I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know if I have a career or not, or where it ends or it begins. I have been working, doing what I do for a long time. But my creative process has always been so tortuous.

I sometimes have a horrible fear of turning up a canvas of mine. I'm always afraid of finding a monster in place of the precious jewels I thought I had put there!

I think that's just part of how it is with making art. Sometimes you're just flooded with ideas, and then other times you're questioning all the ideas you ever had before, and everything is just... lame.

I think anyone who has, you know, is in any sort of artistic pursuit, kind of goes up and down with the way they feel about their work. And I, for the most part, am pretty happy person. But, yeah. I go through definite periods of time where I'm not funny. I'm not good. I'm - I don't feel original.

That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.

It seems that the hurdle you have to jump over is everyone's informed opinion. When you're a young playwright, you're probably too precarious in your own technique to understand that when these seemingly informed opinions are contradicting each other, it becomes this paralyzing monolith.

I spend most of my days pacing around, muttering that I have no ideas, feeling like I'm walking a plank.

Anxiety and doubt are among my biggest struggles as a writer.

There was this moment, particularly after I had my first child, where I felt like, 'I don't know if I'll ever make a record, or if this is always going to be something just floating around in my head.'

When I leave a recording session, there is usually a lot of paranoia or superstition on my part, like I'm afraid to hear what we've done.

If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.

I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might rightly advance in any direction. I have not even any defense to offer for standing on this platform, holding on to this strap, letting myself be carried along by this tram, nor for the people who give way to the tram or walk quietly along or stand gazing into shop windows. Nobody asks me to put up a defense, indeed, but that is irrelevant.

Losing It Some days I think I'm losing my mind. What seems so clear most of the time becomes a big question mark. Am I really the way I percieve myself, or is the person others see the truth of me? I wait for answers, but inside I know I have to go out and find them. And answers like knowledge, are not always where we first look for them.

As an insecure writer, I'll finish a scene and worry there's a better version of it. Or it could be elevated somehow.

It was hard to reassure grown-ups when you weren't certain yourself what you were feeling and thinking—when thoughts dissolved before you could name them.

I'd seen too many troubling things to be easy in my mind. I knew too much and not enough. I'd better go out, I said to myself, I'd better go out again.

I think the biggest obstacle I still have to overcome is myself, and just kind of struggling every day with what to do with the work and where to go next.

I do know my own mind,' protested Anne. 'The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.

I feel that I have something significant to say, but I cannot think what it is.

Painting and sculpture, labour and good faith, have been my ruin and I continually go from bad to worse. Better it would have been for me if I had set myself to making matches in my youth. I should not be in such distress of mind.

I'm still afflicted with the malady of research. I don't like what I do, and I paint it out, and paint it out again. I hope this mania will come to an end... I'm like a child at school. The white page must always be evenly written and slap! bang! and there's a blot! I'm still blotting and I'm forty years old.