Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 19

When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.
Haruki Murakami
No matter how hard you try to create a story that's completely fictional, parts of your own experience are bound to surface.
Hiroshi Ishizaki
Romantic EgoistNozomi: You've got an idea in your head... how you should act, but you can't act like, so you stifle yourself and don't even try.
Bisco Hatori
Now If diversity were inherently good, inherently valuable, inherently wonderful, why would we have to have the highly-paid profession know as 'diversity consultant' to manage it? Things that are inherently good, to enjoy them, or to make the most of them, you don't need a consultant. You don't need a consultant to make the most out of good-tasting food, beautiful weather, the affection of your friends. Those are inherently good things. Diversity required consultants because diversity is hard. Diversity is difficult. It's because it's difficult for people to try to work, to act, and live together with people are are unlike themselves.
Jared Taylor
Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.
Haruki Murakami
Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
Shunryu Suzuki
I have always loved Naoko, and I still loved her. But there is a decisive finality to what exists between Midori and me.
Haruki Murakami
‎By 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory.
Michio Kaku
There was just one moon. That familiar, yellow, solitary moon. The same moon that silently floated over fields of pampas grass, the moon that rose--a gleaming, round saucer--over the calm surface of lakes, that tranquilly beamed down on the rooftops of fast-asleep houses. The same moon that brought the high tide to shore, that softly shone on the fur of animals and enveloped and protected travelers at night. The moon that, as a crescent, shaved slivers from the soul--or, as a new moon, silently bathed the earth in its own loneliness. THAT moon.
Haruki Murakami
Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.
Haruki Murakami
The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. -Yasutani Roshi, Zen master (1885-1973)
Yasutani Roshi
Show your vulnerability, but have faith. You will succeed. Growth is not glamorous.
Shu Hattori
...The pages and pages of complex, impenetrable calculations might have contained the secrets of the universe, copied out of God's notebook. In my imagination, I saw the creator of the universe sitting in some distant corner of the sky, weaving a pattern of delicate lace so fine that that even the faintest light would shine through it. The lace stretches out infinitely in every direction, billowing gently in the cosmic breeze. You want desperately to touch it, hold it up to the light, rub it against your cheek. And all we ask is to be able to re-create the pattern, weave it again with numbers, somehow, in our own language; to make the tiniest fragment our own, to bring it back to eart.
Yōko Ogawa
One time Marian showed me some sand. When she gave it to me, she said, "These are very interesting stones." It just looked like sand, but she asked me to took through a magnifying glass. Then those small stones were as interesting as the stones I have in my office. The stones in my office are bigger, but under the glass the sand was quite similar.If you say, "This is a rock from the moon", you will be very much interested in it. Actually I don't think there is a great difference between rocks we have on the earth and those on the moon. Even if you go to Mars, I think you will find the same rocks.I am quite sure about it.So if you want to find something interesting, instead of hopping around the universe like this, enjoy your life in every moment, observe what you have now, and truly live in your surroundings.
Shunryu Suzuki
Losers are not necessary in this world.
Ryukishi07
Suddenly the full long wail of a ship's horn surged through the open window and flooded the dim room - a cry of boundless, dark, demanding grief; pitch-black and glabrous as a whale's back and burdened with all the passions of the tides, the memory of voyages beyond counting, the joys, the humiliations: the sea was screaming. Full of the glitter and the frenzy of night, the horn thundered in, conveying from the distant offing, from the dead center of the sea, a thirst for the dark nectar in the little room.
Yukio Mishima
Many of my movies have strong female leads- brave, self-sufficient girls that don't think twice about fighting for what they believe with all their heart. They'll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.
Hayao Miyazaki
Ever two seconds, somewhere in the world, a child dies of starvation. That means every two seconds there is a story where the main character dies. That's a lot of horrible stories. So if my death looks like a sad story to someone else, I hope those people will use their imagination to think of all the children who don't get special deaths.
Mohiro Kitoh
I have met many different people in the course of my life, some of whom I have come to know pretty well, but where these three traits are concerned, I had never encountered anyone before Seiji Ozawa with whom I found it so easy and natural to identify. In that sense, he is a precious person to me. It sets my mind at ease to know that there is someone like him in the world.
Haruki Murakami
The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous...To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them... To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.
Shunryu Suzuki
I love pop culture -- the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That's why I said I don't like elitism.
Haruki Murakami
...having nothing better to do, meandered off to a coffee shop and sat facing each other for a couple of hours, neither of them talking much but each coming to the general conclusion that the other was a person rather like himself...
Ryū Murakami
Desperately struggling, kicking down other people.Stealing the stolen, while repeating your reasons over and over.And even so, you aim for the horizon over the hills.That's why humans are so interesting...
Yana Toboso
What kind of man will feel depressed at being idle? There is nothing finer than to be alone with nothing to distract him.If you follow the ways of the world, your heart will be drawn to its sensual defilements and easily led astray; if you go among people, your words will be guided by others' responses rather than come from your heart. There is nothing firm or stable in a life spent between larking about together and quarreling exuberant one moment, aggrieved and resentful the next. You are forever pondering pros and cons, endlessly absorbed in questions of gain and loss. And on top of delusion comes drunkenness, and in that drunkenness you dream.
Yoshida Kenkō
Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep.
Haruki Murakami
Conclusion 1_Boredom= Flared tempers= hard words
Bisco Hatori
In my crazy world, above all others...you were the only one who was the ugliest. And you were the only one...who was the most beautiful.... This is the unspoken truth.
Kaori Yuki
In reality of everyday occurrences I've had to submit to people in order not to lose them. It's less the submission that bothers me, I guess, than how it makes my life miserable. And what happens if I can't forgive myself for making that choice? And what if, in order to keep on living, I have to continue to accept myself? What am I supposed to do? Conclusion: It'd be best if I'm destroyed. The best thing is for me just to vanish.
Natsuo Kirino
Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.
Haruki Murakami
My heart had melted into something akin to a sensation of happiness, peace of mind one might even say, at the realization that I had now reached the very bottom of agony.
Dazai Osamu
I hope that I am making myself understood. The Golden Temple once more appeared before me. Or rather, I should say that the breast was transformed into the Golden Temple.
Yukio Mishima
Today's satori:Such a change of mind wouldNot exist withoutMy lifelong habit of havingMy mind immersed in blossoms.
Saigyō
You're okay now... You're okay because I'll be holding you like this from now on.
Matsuri Hino
On this roadwhere nobody else travelsautumn nightfall.
Bashō Matsuo
People are not two-thirds one thing and the remainder something else. Temperament, personality, or outlook don’t divide quite like that. The bits don’t separate clearly. You end up a funny homogeneous mixture. This is something that will become more common in the latter part of the century—people with mixed cultural backgrounds, and mixed racial backgrounds. That’s the way the world is going.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Things change everyday. With each new dawn, it is not the same world as before. And you’re not the same person you were either.
Haruki Murakami
Making up for lost time?" "Yes," I say. "A lot of things were stolen from my childhood. Lots of important things. And now I have to get them back." "In order to keep on li
Haruki Murakami
The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life—bigger and deeper than anything he had imagined. It changed its color and shape and expression according to time and place and weather. It aroused a deep sadness in his heart, and at the same time it brought his heart peace and comfort.
Haruki Murakami
Kira is evil ... There's no denying that ... But lately I've been starting to think of it more like this ... The real evil is the power to kill people. Someone who finds himself with that power is cursed. No matter how you use it, anything obtained by killing people can never bring true happiness.
Tsugumi Ohba
Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.
Kazuo Ishiguro
I, too, stood on the sacred image. For a moment this foot was on his face. It was on the face of the man who has been ever in my thoughts, on the face that was before me on the mountains, in my wanderings, in prison, on the best and most beautiful face that any man can ever know, on the face of him whom I have always longed to love. Even now that face is looking at me with eyes of pity from the plaque rubbed flat by many feet. « Trample ! » said those compassionate eyes. « Trample ! Your foot suffers in pain ; it must suffer like all the feet that have stepped on this plaque. But that pain alone is enough. I understand your pain and your suffering. It is for that reason that I am here. »« Lord, I resented your silence. »« I was not silent. I suffered beside you. »
Shūsaku Endō
Strength is seeing yourself as you are.
Taro Okamoto
If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labour per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced.
Masanobu Fukuoka
No riddles while we're in bed, okay?" Song Book whispers as she reaches over and wraps her hands around mine. I couldn't agree more.As far as I'm concerned, beds are meant for making love, for falling asleep in while holding hands, or for flipping over to serve as a barricade, and nothing else.
Genichiro Takahashi
Live. For Now. For the time being.
Ruth Ozeki
IT's not death. It's eternal life. And you get't'be yourself. Compared to that, this world isn't but a momentary fantasy. Please don't forget that.
Haruki Murakami
What is a flower? A giant sexual organ in its Sunday best. The truth has been known for a long time, yet, over-aged adolescents that we are, we persist in speaking sentimental drives about the delicacy of flowers. We construct idiotic phrases like "So-and-so is in the flower of his youth", which is as absurd as saying "in the vagina of his youth".
Amélie Nothomb
These days, there are angry ghosts all around us, dead from wars, sickness, starvation--and nobody cares. So you say you're under a curse? Well, so what? So's the whole damned world.
Hayao Miyazaki
No, we weren't lovers, but in a way we had opened ourselves to each other even more deeply than lovers do. The thought caused me a good deal of grief. What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for - and to do it so unconsciously.
Haruki Murakami
I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.
Haruki Murakami
It's no good to want to win still more when you have already won.
Eiji Yoshikawa
A love you always have to fight for isn't worth it
Yuuki Obata
I had thought about it so often - too often, to the point where it had distorted my sense of time.
Haruki Murakami
Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?
Haruki Murakami
To be perfectly honest with you, I think it's reckless to love and trust another person. It's clearly foolhardy.I'd like it very much if the many daredevils who go ahead anyway, enjoyed this book.
Kaori Ekuni
Then, all but instinctively, I took her in my arms. Pressed against me, her whole body trembling, she continued to cry without a sound.
Haruki Murakami
Victory is in our hands! It's time for our legends to begin! Don't tremble, and don't you dare cry! Come on, show some energy!
Nobuyuki Fukumoto
Each memory was now the shadow of a shadow of a shadow. The only thing that remained tangible to him was the sense of absence.
Haruki Murakami
Yet, even amidst the hatred and carnage, life is still worth living. It is possible for wonderful encounters and beautiful things to exist.
Hayao Miyazaki
That was it. Shogo stopped breathing. The dim yellow light falling from the ceiling of the pilothouse shone on his pale face. He seemed at ease."Shogo!" Shuya yelled. He still had more to say. "You'll see Keiko! You'll be happy with her! You're--"It was too late. Shogo couldn't hear anything anymore. But his face just looked so damned peaceful."Damn it." Shuya's lips trembled along with his words. "Damn it."Holding Shogo's hands, Noriko was crying.Shuya also put his hand on Shogo's thick hand. A thought occured to him. He searched through Shogo's pockets and found the red bird call. He pressed it into Shogo's right hand and closed his hands over it so he could hold it. Shuya then finally burst into tears.
Koushun Takami