Kenzaburo Oe Quotes

My films are a personal reflection on the impact that the state - the system and the world - has on me.

There's nothing particularly unique about my experiences except that they're my experiences.

I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.

My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.

I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal.

When I started writing at 18 or 19, I had a fear of anything autobiographical, but I've come to realise that my writing is very autobiographical at the emotional level.

I can't remove the autobiographical slant from the things I write. You always bring yourself into what you're writing.

To me, writing is a personal thing; I write super-personal, autobiographically.

When I write for myself, I think about myself and draw from my own experience.

I'm such a first-person writer.

I write about what happens to me. It's all there. I couldn't do it any other way.

I write about personal experiences.

I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world.

Writing from life is how I feel most comfortable.

But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?

I don't think I've ever written about me. I'm not a character in any of my plays, except that boy, that silent boy that turns up in Three Tall Women.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

I think, we can only write very personal matters through our experience. When I named my first novel about my son "A Personal Matter," I believe I knew the most important thing: there is not any personal matter; we must find the link between ourselves, our "personal matter," and society.

We live in a media soup and are constantly being programmed or are fighting that programming. Thus any truthful account of a life, every part of a life, is about society as well as an individual.

I tend to write from a personal place, and most of the time when I'm writing by myself, it's coming from something I've experienced.

Some writers such as John Cheever and Raymond Carver seem to draw artistic energy from analyzing the realm of their own experiences - their social circles and memories and mores. I'm one of those who draw creative energy from the opposite.

All of my songs were about my firsthand experiences. Pretty much, I've learned how to become my own muse and take situations from my own life and wear them on my sleeve.

I like autobiographies. I wouldn't mind making one of those.

I like to write about what I've seen and experiences I've been through.

I don't think I could write about something I've never experienced or felt; all my songs are about things I've been through.