One night, I just woke up and I went, 'Killing Jesus.' And I believe, because I'm a Catholic, that comes from the Holy Spirit. My inspiration comes from that. And so I wrote 'Killing Jesus' because I think I was directed to write that.
I think that what I do, in terms of how I craft my words rhetorically, is fairly simple stuff. I don't mean that to denigrate myself. I mean that in the sense of, when I write, the person that I keep in mind is my mother-in-law.
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 n...
I don't think I knew that you could be a novelist. I think a lot of my students are in the same condition. I thought it was unreachable, that it was sort of dead people. It took me a long time - I think I was well into novel writing before I really t...
The way I write is, I listen to things in my head, and then I copy them down. I memorize conversations and things like that; I seem to be able to do that pretty well. I suppose in that respect there's some improvisation, although I work over the stuf...
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 f...
I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.
I can write about all of these bizarre and funny characters in my book, "Diggin' Elroy," because I know them better than anyone else. I have a little bit of all of them in me.
English was great because I could just write my opinion, and that was good enough. I was terrible in Math, even though I had amazing Math teachers. My favorite subject was either English or History. I had a really awesome high school education.
Even though I loved to write, I never liked English lit. class very much. I think it ruins books when you dissect them too much. I liked my art classes best.
I actually love writing for teens best. I had such an awful time in my own teen years - I love having the chance to relive them through my fiction.
Of course you want to be good and you want to do the best you can, but I am inspired by great writing. If there's something about the script, that's what I go for, although I know that that doesn't always translate because sometimes it's about the vi...
When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do.
It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby.
I am drawn to writing and directing as it is most like the feeling I had when I was a teenager with my puppet theatre. You are more in control of everything and involved in every aspect of production, so more challenged and fulfilled.
I never write about CIA conspiracies or the FBI or mafia or anything like that because I just don't understand that world. But I think I do understand individual human harmfulness.
When I set out to write crime fiction, I didn't think to myself, 'I'm going to model myself on Agatha Christie' or 'I am going to be a crime writer in the Christie tradition'.
I'm not in a race with anybody to make the biggest hit movie anymore. I am just trying to tell stories that I can stay interested in for the two years it takes me to supervise the writing and to direct them.
I must be free... free to do what I like, say what I like, write what I like, within the limits prescribed for me by my own sense of what is seemly and fitting.
If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, 'Is that a song?' I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.
I don't know what it is about "magic happens"-stickers on cars but every time I see one I wanna get out my permanent marker and sneak over and write underneath it "so does cot death".
