Haruki Murakami Quotes

There's many times this year I've sat back and thought, I'm making a living from making things up. It's the only skill I have so I've been really lucky.

My preference is for really good writing, and I just really don't care where it is.

We get a lot of unsolicited manuscripts here. Im not even a publisher, but we get several a week. I dont read them, but I do glance through some of them, and some people dont need to be writing, they have something else.

I remember liking to write stories pretty early on. In fourth or fifth grade, they would give us the beginning of a story, and we were supposed to finish it. I remember liking that. But I didn't think about deciding to become a writer until high school at about the age of 16.

I've lost my writing skills since college. I couldn't write a book. It would take a long time.

There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast.

The number of people who can copulate properly may be few; the number who can write well are infinitely fewer.

Real seriousness in regard to writing being one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a "killing." They are interested in being a writer not in writing. . . If this is what you are interested in, I am not going to be much use to you.

It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.

People just don't know how to write down a simple easy line. It's difficult for them; it's like trying to keep a hard-on while drowning - not many can do it.

Nothing can injure a man's writing if he's a first-rate writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there's not anything can help it much. The problem does not apply if he is not first rate because he has already sold his soul for a swimming pool.

If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.

Good writers hate bad writing but hating bad writing doesn’t make you good. Writing badly does.

...I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.

The real writer is one who really writes.

I can remember as a college student writing stories and novels, some of which ended up getting published and some that didn't. It was like my head was going to burst - there were so many things I wanted to write all at once. I had so many ideas, jammed up. It was like they just needed permission to come out.

If I were a better artist, I'd be a painter, and if I were a better writer, I'd write books.. but I'm not, so I draw cartoons!

When you're a writer, you have to have the passion and the skill and the craft. It's not just enough to have the passion. You've gotta have all three.

When I began writing, the words that inspired me were these: A writer is someone who has written today. If you want to be a writer, whats stopping you?

The act of writing means you wish to communicate. Whether you're writing a memoir for yourself you put in a drawer, or you write a poem and you send it to a little magazine, or you write for publication, it always means - the form follows function.

This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it.

I should have written books instead of reading them.

Good writing comes from good talent.

Write for pleasure and publish for money.