Reddit mentions of Starting Point, 1979-1996

Check out The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IxI9WmgqWWU

If anyone is interested in learning about miyazaki and his thoughts and influences I highly recommend reading Starting Point http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Point-1979-1996-Hayao-Miyazaki/dp/1421561042

My biggest influences are Makoto Shinkai and Hayao Miyazaki.

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend you read https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Point-1979-1996-Hayao-Miyazaki/dp/1421561042. It gives a lot of insight into his career and thought processes

Starting Point: https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Point-1979-1996-Hayao-Miyazaki/dp/1421561042

You should enjoy also "Starting Point".

Miyazaki is not only a great animator and director, but a great mind: he has read and pondered a lot, and fights agains cliches not only in his work but in all he says and writes.

Actually, I think that -for some reason- this tends to happen with all great artists, to some degree. For some reason, it seems that to be a great musician/painter/novelist you need to be a great man... in some sense that exceeds by far your particular artistic skills. (I thought that again after reading the letters of Mozart)

As much as I would love to think he's going to make at least one more film, judging by these lines (which were repeated at least once more during throughout the movie) from Kaze Tachinu, I'd say that he probably won't.

Then again, Princess Mononoke was at one point also supposed to be his last film and we ended up getting many more! Perhaps we could see some more manga from him (dreams naïvely, looking at her Nausicaä omnibi)

For now, though, I'm planning on buying the two recently released biographical books about Miyazaki, Starting Point and Turning Point.

Along with what everyone else mentioned, there's Starting Point and Turning Point, two books the chronicle the behind the scenes and insight into Miyazaki movies. It's pretty much what you're looking for.

On a different note, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness is a documentary following the development of The Wind Rises. It was released it Japan, and coming to the US. I'm super excited for this one!