This is very rare for anyone in life to pursue something and that thing being the thing you actually most want to do. It's all about the inner, rathe….

The mental state I'm in is completely different, but the act of trying to write is the same. I mean, in all instances you try to write good sentences….

Stories only happen to those who are able to tell them..

I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly..

I know the pleasure you get from making your films. The intense involvement in every aspect: the acting, the camera, the colors, the costumes, even t….

My children haven't read 'Winter Journal'. They have read some of my work, but I really don't foist it on them. I want them to be free to discover it….

I feel I'm discovering something new, a different rhythm, and I guess these rhythms have a lot to do with walking, too, but it's a longer trajectory ….

Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I've changed my mind about a lot of things over the years..

I was very moved to see that the name of the boat was Hamlet - an imaginary character becomes so important to people, we think about them so much tha….

I thought I was terrible [to play a cameo] and decided never to act again..

Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing hims….

It would be a terrible world if everyone was an artist. Nothing would get done!.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was read….

You can't ever approach a book as a complete virgin, certainly not if you're a critic. There is a lot of bad faith out there. That's why I finally tr….

Writing has always had a tactile quality for me. It's a physical experience..

I barely can go shopping for clothes. I find it difficult to walk into stores. The whole thing bores me so much..

I had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof..

you can survive only if nothing is necessary to you.

There is a line from the Marina Tsvetaeva poem I'm so fond of: "In this most Christian of worlds/ All poets are Jews." What she means is that writers….

At that point, Noriko finally breaks down and begins to cry sobbing into her hands as the floodgates open - this young woman who has suffered in sile….

All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going ….