From an Inter­view of Haruki Murakami by salon.com:

You remem­ber that scene in the mys­te­ri­ous hotel? I like the story of Orpheus, his descend­ing, and this is based on that. The world of death and you enter there at your own risk. I think that I am a writer, and I can do that. I am tak­ing my own risk. I have con­fi­dence that I can do it.

But it takes time. When I started to write this book and I was writ­ing and writ­ing every day, then when that dark­ness came, I was ready to enter it. It took time before that, to reach that stage. You can’t do that by start­ing to write today and then tomor­row enter­ing that kind of world. You have to endure and labor every day. You have to have the abil­ity to con­cen­trate. I think that’s the most impor­tant ingre­di­ent to the writer. For that I was train­ing every day. Phys­i­cal power is essen­tial. Many authors don’t respect that. [Laughs] They drink too much and smoke too much. I don’t crit­i­cize them, but to me, strength is crit­i­cal. Peo­ple don’t believe that I’m a writer because I’m jog­ging and swim­ming every day. They say, “He’s not a writer.”

And here’s another by Metropolis:

“I’ve been writ­ing nov­els for 20 years, but I haven’t been very ambi­tious,” he says, set­ting down his tea mug and rub­bing his chin. He refuses to read any of his ear­lier novels-“I’m totally dis­sat­is­fied with my ear­lier work; I was unhappy, like a lost boy”-and he shifts uncom­fort­ably when I bring up var­i­ous scenes from them, fre­quently say­ing that he has no idea what a given book or story might be about.

[Ital­ics are my own]

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