
Novelist as a Vocation

good luck is, so to speak, simply an admission ticket.
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
What we call the imagination consists of fragments of memory that lack any clear connection with one another.
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
A writer’s instinct and intuition derive less from logic and more from the level of determination brought to the task.
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
Some people insist that if you’re truly talented at something, your talent will definitely blossom someday. But based on my own gut feelings—and I trust my gut—that won’t necessarily happen. If that talent lies buried in a relatively shallow place, it’s very possible it will emerge on its own. But if it’s buried deep down, you can’t discover it tha
... See moreHaruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
Two principles guided me. The first was to omit all explanations. Instead, I would toss a variety of fragments—episodes, images, scenes, phrases—into that container called the novel and then try to join them together in a three-dimensional way. Second, I would try to make those connections in a space set entirely apart from conventional logic and l
... See moreHaruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
Opinion surveys allow you to check the box “Undecided.” Well, I think there should be another box you can check: “Undecided at the present time.”
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
All creative activity is, to some extent, done partly with the intention to rectify or fix yourself. In other words, by relativizing yourself, by adapting your soul to a form that’s different from what it is now, you can resolve—or sublimate—the contradictions, rifts, and distortions that inevitably crop up in the process of being alive.
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
It is my belief that a rich, spontaneous joy lies at the root of all creative expression. What is originality, after all, but the shape that results from the natural impulse to communicate to others that feeling of freedom, that unconstrained joy?
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
Originality is hard to define in words, but it is possible to describe and reproduce the emotional state it evokes.
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
When less time is taken between gathering information and acting on it, so that everyone becomes a critic or a news commentator, then the world becomes an edgier, less reflective place.