The other side is usually a dark place?

Murakami in The New YorkerRead fiction and essays by the author.

Not necessarily. I think it has more to do with curiosity. If there is a door and you can open it and enter that other place, you do it. It’s just curiosity. What’s inside? What’s over there? So that’s what I do every day. When I’m writing a... See more

I think life is a kind of laboratory where you can try anything.

I have learned so many things from music about writing. I think there are three important elements: rhythm, harmony, and free improvisation. I learned these things from music, not from literature. And when I started to write, I tried to write as though I were playing music.

I want to do is write serious, complicated, difficult things in a very easy style that is fluid and comfortable to read.

life is a kind of laboratory where you can try anything

I have learned so many things from music about writing. I think there are three important elements: rhythm, harmony, and free improvisation. I learned these things from music, not from literature. And when I started to write, I tried to write as though I were playing music.

I respect the daily routine

I felt that I should come home and see if there was something I could do for the people. Not for the country, not for the nation, not for the society, but for my people—that was my notion.

What’s the difference between the two things—between the country and the people—for you?

People buy my books. The country doesn’t.

I don’t research when I write novels, because imagination is my asset, my gift.