I choose Haruki Murakami, and this is my summer research

5 Quotes

• “Writing novels is like planting a forest…writing short stories is more like planting a garden” (Haruki Murakami)
• “While anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream, it’s the rare artist, like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves” THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (1Q84)
• “if you only read the book that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking” (Norwegian Wood)
• “I’m obsessed with the well. And the elephant. The refrigerator. The cat. And the ironing. I can’t explain it” (Haruki Murakami)
• “Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life” “If you cannot concentrate you are not so happy. I’m not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years. I don’t get bored. I’m kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I’m always hot” (Haruki Murakami)

5 Motifs

• Butterflies
• Wells
• Ears
• The moon
• Willows
• Cats

5 Characters

• Tengo
• Aomame
• Wantabe
• Midori
• Naoko

5 Locations

• Kyoto - where he grew up
• Hawaii - holiday destination
• Tokyo - features in most of his novels, and where he has lived for large chunks of his life.
• Cambridge Masachusetts - holiday destination
• Ami Hostel (Norwegian Wood)
• Highway stairway (1Q84)

5 Pieces of Information

• He likes ironing
• He goes running/swimming everyday
• He likes Jazz – his favourite artist being the saxophonist Stan Getz
• His first memory was getting out of the house when he was 3 and accidently falling into a Creek, his mother saving him before being swept away by the current.
• He used to run a Jazz Bar in Tokyo called Peter Cat.