Haruki Murakami Quotes

Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.

In terms of the symbolism, I think that if you do it right, writing is a bit like dreaming.

Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call sages, and those who act upon it, we call artists.

Faith is almost the bottom line of creativity; it requires a leap of faith any time we undertake a creative endeavor, whether this is going to the easel, or the page, or onto the stage - or for that matter, in a homelier way, picking out the right fabric for the kitchen curtains, which is also a creative act.

To draw you must close your eyes and sing.

I think the key is basically just your determination. As far an artist is concerned, it's just about your drive and your dream.

I consider creativity to be a more non-rational, subconscious thing. You have a relationship to your creativity - you can feed it with content, with some rational prodding and sleep and things like that, but the mechanisms by which your creativity work are largely unknown.

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.

Art is about play and about transcendent meanings, not reducible to politics.

The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

The more life you have, the more it's in your pores, the more able you are to be creative as an artist.

The subject of my work has a lot to do with general, artistic matters, questions like: What is creativity? Where do we come from? What are our motors? What is coincidence? What is logic?

I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?

What you need to be a good photographer is an overwhelming curiosity and a good digestion. Sometimes you feel blessed with curiosity, sometimes you feel cursed with it.

Turin is a city which entices a writer towards vigor, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way towards madness.

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

Rational intelligence is dangerous and leads to ratiocination. The painter is a medium who doesn't realize what he is doing. No translation can express the mystery of sensibility, a word, still unreliable, which is nevertheless the basis of painting or poetry, like a kind of alchemy.

Wonder and awe are the diet of the artist and without them the world would be far less meaningful to us than it is.

Art is giving to what you create a soul.

I'm an artist in my heart.

A writer is an artist. They're creating things out of thin air.

The artist in me welcomes another opportunity to be creative.

The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him.... He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them.