Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

I may be the type who manages to grab all the pointless things in life but lets the really important things slip away.

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.

I think certain types of processes don’t allow for any variation. If you have to be part of that process, all you can do is transform—or perhaps distort—yourself through that persistent repetition, and make that process a part of your own personality.

What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing?

Have you ever had that feeling—that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?

I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightning. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me.