Japanese women live in fear of making the least sound in a bathroom stall. Japanese men pay no attention to the subject whatsoever.

I need to be very hungry all the time. I need to be very hungry to write.

More and more I understand that it's very fine not to know where you come from.

Luckily I haven't fallen into the trap, which has claimed so many writers, of living from day to day thinking 'Ah, I'll write a book about that.'

I've noticed it a lot. I'm not someone who revises. It's always the first movement, it's that. It's an instinct. Either it works straight away, or it won't ever work.

I eat in a strange way, but I enjoy it. Everything became well when I finally understood that I enjoy being hungry. Normally, I only eat in the evening.

I never even dreamt of being a writer because I didn't feel allowed. When I was a child I was terribly ambitious, but I didn't know at all what this great thing would become.