It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.

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’ve had that kind of experience myself: I’m looking at a map and I see someplace that makes me think, ‘I absolutely have to go to this place, no matter what’. And most of the time, for some reason, the place is far away and hard to get to. I feel this overwhelming desire to know what kind of scenery the place has, or what people are doing there. It’s like measles - you can’t show other people exactly where the passion comes from. It’s curiosity in the purest sense. An inexplicable inspiration.

I’m just kinda tired. Like a monkey in the rain.

Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right.

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.

I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.