Haruki Murakami Quotes

When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It's just a matter of joining the dots.

When I sat down and wrote the first paragraph, I was like, 'Oh, I can go with this.' I didn't do an outline. I didn't do anything. I just wrote sentence by sentence, not knowing where the story was going.

I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.

When I sit down to write, I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map.

I cannot outline. I do not know what the next thing is going to happen in the book until it comes out of my fingers.

The process is different for every book, but there are similarities. I always draw from the inside out. I don't plot them ahead of time, and I'm always surprised by things that happen in my books.

I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to what it will be in the end. There is not much deliberateness about it.

When I decide to write a story, I don't think too much about what I want it to be, I just let things come naturally and this is how it turns out. It's just how my subconscious works.

I like to sit down every day and not know where the book is going. I have no idea where the book is going to go or how it's going to end as I'm writing it.

I sometimes don't know what I'm writing when I start writing it, on some level.

I start with characters, and then I start writing, and then, if I'm lucky, things start to happen.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

When I'm happiest writing is just not knowing where it goes and just let the characters bring you there.

I simply don't understand authors that know everything before they write it; it seems so cold blooded. I think it's lovely when the story takes over and goes somewhere else.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don't even know I'm working on. It's a free lunch. A free dinner. I don't know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

I am very spontaneous when I write; it kind of just comes out. I never think about what I'm going to write about first... it just sort of comes out like word vomit.

I write linearly without knowing the full story. I discover it as I write it.

I like to allow a story to arise as I'm writing scripts. I find it horrible when I try to think of something for the plot without really being on the ground and seeing where it goes.

I'm not afraid of just cranking it out and seeing what comes out of my subconscious. Because I don't always know what I'm feeling. I do a lot of rewriting later. But that first blast feels like a spigot - like it's coming from somewhere else.

And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

I've never written a book with an outline or a predetermined theme. It's only in retrospect that themes or subjects become identifiable. That's the fun of it: discovering what's next. I'm often surprised by plot developments I would not have dreamed of starting out, but that, in the course of the writing, come to seem inevitable.

The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive.

If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.

I don't outline; I listen to a kind of whisper inside the material.