When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I'm still awake. I can continue yesterday's dream today, something you can't normally do in everyday life.

Stories lie deep in our souls. Stories lie so deep at the bottom of our hearts that they can bring people together on the deepest level. When I write a novel, I go into such depths.

There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It's like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

I had my jazz club and I had enough money. So I didn't have to write for my living.

If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else.

I write my novels personally, desperately and non-negligently. When I write my novels, I think about my novels only, and never do other works.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I'm 100 percent fiction writer... I don't want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don't state my political messages to anybody.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm just a guy who can write.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing.

It's not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

I didn't know the term 'synesthesia' until I was working on 'Cruel Summer.' Halfway into writing that, I really understood that, my entire life, I had been trying to describe this condition of mine: through painting, through this seven-screen Surround Vision film we shot in Qatar, through all these things.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.