Haruki Murakami Quotes

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.

I've been influenced by so many different writers along the way - from Charles Dickens, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock, John D. McDonald, and so many others - that it would take a page or two to list them all.

Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again.

I always have a book that I use that somehow inspires my novels.

I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience.

My first five novels were written longhand. So were hosts of short stories.

While the subject matter of my novels could not be further removed from the stuff I used to trot out at the Comedy Store, the delivery of the material employs many of the same techniques.

'The Secret Life of Bees' was my first novel, so I had no process. I was flying by the seat of my pants, as they say, trying to understand how I, as a novelist, would work with story.

I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.

I can't write a book like 'Lamb' or 'Fool' every year. It just takes too much research and craft.

Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.

Authors are influenced by everything they've ever read. If you've read widely enough, it helps you create your own mix.

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

I know that the writers I read and admire all have an influence on my work, but trying to determine to what degree any particular piece of input changes the way I think about writing seems counterproductive.

I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.

I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort.

I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.

My writing process hasn't changed - it's is the same whether I'm working on a Y.A. novel or, as now, a new novel for adults. A lot of reading, a lot of research if the subject warrants it, a lot of sticky notes and scraps of paper - and get to work.

I don't think I can pick apart how I was influenced by which author. But these were the authors whose books I went back to again and again when I was in high school and college, when I first started trying to write stories.

Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can.

Although psychoanalysis has influenced me personally, it has had curiously little influence on my writing. This may be because writers learn from other writers, not from theories.

When I start a new novel, I often write 'test chapters' in different tenses and from different points of view in order to figure out which is best to tell the tale.