Haruki Murakami Quotes

I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

I wrote 'Ava Wrestles the Alligator' when I was 22 or 23. These people and that world have been evolving in me for a while. It's such a shift not to be in that world.

I do want to work on writing, because writing's a skill. Writing is something that you can train yourself to know better. To know yourself better. And it's intimidating as hell.

I've written a lot of books now; I've been published for over 30 years. I hope with every book I learn something new, and with every new novel I try to improve the process of writing.

I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

I didn't study writing. I didn't write anything substantial until I got to California.

I'm always thinking about stories and ideas, and I have a few I'd like to actively pursue, but as much as I love them, I love the process of creation, and I want to go on and create things for myself, and create new things.

When I'm trying a new form- trying to do something I'm not used to doing, which was true of the novel.

I want to keep - this seems so corny - I want to keep growing as an artist.

Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

In life we try to grow and better ourselves. As an artist, I feel like I've grown tremendously.

I am capable of much more. I guess every artist feels that way. If you are satisfied, you begin to stagnate. I want to grow as an actress every day. There are so many things you can learn, and you can improve upon your skills and abilities every day.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

What drives me is to still feel creative and like I'm pushing myself as an artist.

I never know how a novel is going to end, because you don't really know what's going to be at the bottom of a novel until you excavate it.

Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer.

I just finished a novel, and I'm back kind of noodling on the screenplays. Screenplays are tough. I am making music, I'm just not sure what kind of music it is or where it's going.

I'm not sure if I always wanted to be a writer, but I was always writing.

If you're writing, you're starting in private. It can really be this amazing, private, freeing experience. Forget that it's for other people - that comes in later.

I want to have new challenges and write new crazy books because I think it makes me a better writer to be insecure and try new things.

No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written.

I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

In every novel, I write about something - a place, an experience, an emotion - with which I'm intimately familiar, but it's also crucial to me that I take on challenges. If write only inside my comfort zone, I'll suffocate.