
Novelist as a Vocation

good luck is, so to speak, simply an admission ticket.
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
In my opinion, an artist must fulfill the following three basic requirements to be deemed “original”: The artist must possess a clearly unique and individual style (of sound, language, or color). Moreover, that uniqueness should be immediately perceivable on first sight (or hearing). That style must have the power to update itself. It should grow w
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Language, though, is tough and resilient, a tenacity backed up by a long history. Its autonomy cannot be lost or seriously damaged, however roughly it is handled. It is the right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of language and expand the range of its effectiveness. Without that adventurous spirit, nothing new can ever be born.
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
A writer’s greatest responsibility is to his readers, to keep providing them with the best work that he is capable of turning out.
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
Words have power. Yet that power must be rooted in truth and justice. Words must never stand apart from those principles.
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
Nor do I see the electronic media as a threat. The form and the medium aren’t all that important, and I don’t care if the words appear on paper or on a screen
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
the first task for the aspiring novelist is to read tons of novels. Sorry to start with such a commonplace observation, but no training is more crucial.
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?