Haruki Murakami Quotes

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 one of those authors who claims to hear voices in my head or 'let the characters speak through me,' whatever that might mean.

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

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.

I cannot live or write without music. It stimulates the normally dormant parts of my brain that come in handy when constructing fiction.

I write novels and other things.

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

I have no favourite genre or style but treat each novel with the same care, imagination and craftsmanship. It's as difficult to write a crime or a children's novel with a touch of style and grace as it is a literary novel.

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.

For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a specific agenda.

I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.

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

When I first started to get into writing, it was via music. I'd generate ideas for songs that would turn into stories, then they'd turn into novels. I was biased toward music.

I'm very interested in writing an actual series, that doesn't have too much to do with my music - a world I create that has characters in it. I'm just trying to get there by doing things that I want to do.

A novel usually begins, in my experience, with a thought or image that won't leave me alone.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

I didn't know how to write a novel, so I sort of let it happen in waves. The only way I could write it was to think like scenes in a movie.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

I think I've written 40 books, and none of them have been heavy on action. I'm an introspective person.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

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 don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.