Novelist as a Vocation

by Haruki Murakami

Recent research shows that aerobic exercise leads to a rapid increase in the number of neurons produced in the hippocampus in the brain.

From about the middle of my time in high school, I started reading English books in the original. My English wasn’t great, but I wanted to read the novels in the original, or books that hadn’t yet been translated into Japanese, so I bought a pile of English paperbacks from a used-book store down near Kobe harbor,

I’m the type of person who whenever I like something and am interested in it, puts everything I have into it and goes all in.

“There are never any bad people in your novels.”

“Not to see what you want to see, but what you must see,” she tells him. To tell the truth, until she said that, the idea that Tsukuru needed to go back to see his four friends was the farthest thought from my mind.

it’s an extremely difficult task to observe yourself as you are now,

I’m a professional writer, what I can do best is write novels, and as much as I can I want to invest all my energy

in that. Life is short, and I have only so much time and energy.

My works have now been translated into over fifty different languages.

So where, I ask myself, do you think that potential lies? It’s found inside me, I believe. First, I established myself as a writer within Japan, then turned my attention abroad, and widened the scope of my readership.