Haruki Murakami Quotes

I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block.

I'm constantly battling writer's block; it usually takes me two hours to write anything.

I feel like I spend most of my time in a state of writer's block! When things do come out, they come out quickly.

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

I’m dazzled by your facility. In ten days you’ll have written six stories! I don’t understand it… I’m like one of those old aqueducts: there’s so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from the end of my pen drop by drop.

You know, sometimes I get moments of inspiration when I'm writing something and then the task seems so daunting that it just kind of scares me away.

My process is messy and non-linear, full of false starts, fidgets, and errands that I suddenly need to run now; it is a battle to get something - anything - down on paper. I doodle in sketchbooks: bits of ideas, fragments of sentences, character names, single lines of dialogue with no context.

Some days you feel like this is really going well. You can tell. Other days, you're just drawing like a farmer and you don't know why.

I go into my workroom seven mornings a week. There will only be one or two mornings a week where it seems to be going well, but to earn those days you have to go through slow, slodgy days where your mind feels like porridge.

I don't feel prolific. I feel like I'm plodding along. Each day you sit down, and you hope that you get your work done.

Sometimes I'll sing the same verse through the entire song, because the other verses aren't clicking. And when they do come to me, I'm in the middle of that same verse!

I can't remember writing any of the songs that I've written.

Writing, for me, is very inspiration-dependent. And inspiration can be a jerk.

There were points in my career where I thought, 'Maybe I'm done. Maybe I've written everything there is to write.' Now I've learned that it's just working itself out. You have to let it do it.

It's not like I've got 100 ideas. I finish a book, and I've got none.

Writer's block is your self-critic getting in the way, because creativity will just flow otherwise.

I never get writer's block, but I do have days where I crawl under the duvet.

Maybe I can't write without painting myself into a corner first.

Sometimes I'll go without writing for a while and I'll start to be driven nuts. I start doubting my writing ability. So I'll sit down and a dozen songs will pop out. It's fun.

My muse is an ungrateful harlot who’s abandoned me to actually come up with my own plots.

I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. (“Advance Notice”)

Writing is not hard. Just get paper and pencil, sit down, and write as it occurs to you. The writing is easy-it's the occurring that's hard.

I'm up to my ears in unwritten words.

I don't believe in writer's block. There are good days when you're writing and less good days. I've learned that if it's not happening to walk away and return later. I doodle a lot and often get my best ideas with a pencil in my hand while I'm doodling. The problem is, sometimes I lose my doodles and that's bad!

Philip Larkin didn't write for several years before his life ended. And when he was asked why he didn't write, he said the muse deserted him. And when I read that, it really had a profound effect upon me, sort of scared me. So that's why I think I have no right to assume that some thought is going to come... But I think, in my imagination, if it is it, there will probably be something else I'm interested in.