I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory. As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself. I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this? 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. Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink. In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness. In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount I'm not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years.

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. Chance encounters are what keep us going. Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life. It's physical. 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. You know, if you are kind of rich, the best thing is that you don't have to think about money. The best thing you can buy with money is freedom, time. I don't know how much I earn a year. I have no idea. I don't know how much I pay in taxes.

Young people these days don't trust anything at all. They want to be free. I'm not intelligent. I'm not arrogant. I'm just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn't want to become a writer - it just happened. My heroes don't have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don't know how, so they talk to themselves. 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 lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.

Have books "happened" to you? Unless your answer to that question is "yes", I'm unsure how to talk to you. There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair. Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it. It is hard to be an individual in Japan. Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way. Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart. When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say. If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark. But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language. There are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. Types of death you can't smell. 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've been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It's natural. I have always liked running, so it wasn't particularly difficult to make it a habit. All you need is a pair of running shoes and you can do it anywhere. It does not require anybody to do it with, and so I found the sport perfectly fits me as a person who tends to be independent and individualistic.

Most near-future fictions are boring. It's always dark and always raining, and people are so unhappy. The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory. I collect records. And cats. I don't have any cats right now. But if I'm taking a walk and I see a cat, I'm happy. 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. If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.

Silence, I discover, is something you can really hear. Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy. Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting. I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished. Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual.

I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning. You are 27 or 28, right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.
"For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting. "What happens when people open their hearts?"
"They get better." And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

Many people tell me that they don't know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That's good. I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven't belonged to any company or any system. It isn't easy to live like this in Japan. The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school. Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose). Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.

A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. Listen up - there's no war that will end all wars. Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work. Sometimes I feel so - I don’t know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you’re used to has been ripped away. Like there’s no more gravity, and I’m left to drift in outer space with no idea where I’m going like a little lost Sputnik?
I guess so. Confidence, as a teenager?
Because I knew what I loved.
I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things.
So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

If they invent a car that runs on stupid jokes, you could go far. Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked in filthy air all the time late into the night. I was very excited when I started making a living out of my writing, and I decided, "I will live in nothing but an absolutely healthy way." Team sports aren't my thing. I find it easier to pick something up if I can do it at my own speed. And you don't need a partner to go running, you don't need a particular place, like in tennis, just a pair of trainers. Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade. Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story. I'm a writer. I don't support any war. That's my principle.

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. I'm kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I'm always hot. Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting. She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while. "Letters are just pieces of paper", I said. "Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish."