Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 21

You're always in a rush, or else you're too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk.
Kazuo Ishiguro
I don't know, it's stupid being 20," she said. "I'm just not ready. It feels weird. Like somebody's pushing me from behind.
Haruki Murakami
I exist here, now. I'm not much interested in the future. Or, more precisely put, I do not believe in the future. To exaggerate a little, I have no faith that I will still exist tomorrow or the day after. What is more, I absolutely detest retrospection. That dislike is balances only by my desire to make my way back home as quickly as possible.
Yohji Yamamoto
In the Kamigata area, they have a sort of tiered lunchbox they use for a single day when flower viewing. Upon returning, they throw them away, trampling them underfoot. The end is important in all things.
Tsunetomo Yamamoto
Where there's guts, there's curiosity, and where there's curiosity, there's guts.
Haruki Murakami
Again, there were maidens who cherished the firm belief that he had come from the sea. Because within his breast could be heard the roaring of the sea. Because in the pupils of his eyes there lingered the mysterious and eternal horizon that the sea leaves as a keepsake deep in the eyes of all who are born at the seaside and forced to depart from it. Because his signs were sultry like the tidal breezes of full summer, fragrant with the smell of seaweed cast upon the shore.
Yukio Mishima
She was seriously in love, but she never made demands.
Haruki Murakami
Still, though, I can't be sure if the zoo as I recall it was really like that. How can I put it? I sometimes feel that it's too vivid, if you know what I mean. And when I start having thoughts like this, the more I think about it, the less I can tell how much of the vividness is real and how much of it my imagination has invented. I feel as if I've wandered into a labyrinth. Has that ever happened to you?
Haruki Murakami
i wish you could understand me, but of course it is not the way of this world that we are ever completely understood.
Murasaki Shikibu
Like boarding a train running parallel. That's what disappearing is.
Haruki Murakami
When you’re always scheming about ways to make money, it’s like a part of you is lost.
Haruki Murakami
Be resolved that honor is heavier than the mountains and death lighter than the feather.
Yasuo Kuwahara
Even if you have not awakened, if you realize that your perceptions and activities are all like dreams and you view them with detachment, not giving rise to grasping and rejecting discrimination, then this is virtually tantamount to awakening from the dream.
Muso Kokushi
And then it struck him what lay buried far down under the earth on which his feet were so firmly planted: the ominous rumbling of the deepest darkness, secret rivers that transported desire, slimy creatures writhing, the lair of earthquakes ready to transform whole cities into mounds of rubble. These, too, were helping to create the rhythm of the earth. He stopped dancing and, catching his breath, stared at the ground beneath his feet as though peering into a bottomless hole.
Haruki Murakami
Winter solitude-in a world of one colourthe sound of the wind.
Bashō Matsuo
What if someone had the potential to discover a formula to unlock the mysteries of the universe wanted to become a pulp fiction writer? What if someone who had the potential to create unparalleled gastronomic delicacies had his heart set on civil engineering? There is what we desire to do, and what we are able to do. When those two things don't coincide, which path should we pursue to find happiness?
Hiroshi Sakurazaka
There was a time when my soul was wandering through the deepest darkness…
Haruki Murakami
Just because he's good at something, doesn't necessarily mean he likes doing it.->> Azuma-sensei, (Kimi to Boku, #1)
Hotta Kiichi
Although this may be a most difficult thing, if one will do it, it can be done. There is nothing that one should suppose cannot be done.
Tsunetomo Yamamoto
We've done so much together, wherever I go and whatever I see, I think of you. Newborn babies; the pattern on the plate that you can see under a paper-thin slice of sashimi; fireworks in August. The moon hidden behind the clouds over the ocean at night. When I'm sitting down someplace, inadvertently stepping on someone's toes, and have to apologize. And when someone picks up something I've dropped, and I thank him. When I see an elderly man tottering along,and wonder how much longer he has to live. Dogs and cats peeking out from alleyways. A beautiful view from a tall building. The warm blast of air you feel when you go down into a subway station. The phone ringing in the middle of the night. Even when I have crushes on other men, I always see you in the curve of their eyebrows.""Yet I must remain calm, detached. It's a little like trying to ignore a plate of delicious food when you're really hungry. When it beckons you, there's no problem with enjoying the aroma and appreciating it with your eyes, but at some point you have to separate yourself and realize, like a professional waiter does, that it's not your own. It's my job to ignore those plates heaped with delicious morsels and just carry them where they need to go.
Banana Yoshimoto
When someone is force to realize that the road he'd been working hard to make progress on was no different from the place he'd started, and when he realized that he had in fact gone backward, all that person can do is face the pale sky and lament.
Mizuki Nomura
... What of this "despair?" I know it all too well... because up until now... I've climbed up, kicked it in it's teeth, and surpassed it... over and over again just to make it to this very moment!
Tite Kubo
Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in the world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarly, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.
Osamu Dazai
She was quit a handsome man, my sister.
Wataru Watari
You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.
Haruki Murakami
The foods that are nearby are best for human beings, and things that he has to struggle to obtain turn out to be the least beneficial of all.
Fukuoka
I wonder why people work so hard to become politicians just in order to do something wrong.
Masuji Ibuse
There are so many things we can’t do anything about if we think about generalities. Things won’t go well because there is a huge gap between the generalities and the particulars. If we see generalities from the top of a mountain or from a plane, we feel it’s hopeless, but if we go down, there is a nice road running about fifty meters, we feel this is a nice road, and if the weather is fine and shining, we feel we can go on… Since the people in the community are cleaning up the river in my neighborhood, I join them when I have the time. A human can often be satisfied with the particulars. That’s what I like best these days.
Hayao Miyazaki
There were little girls who would snuggle up to any grown man and try to guide his hand inside their underwear, and there were kids who compulsively bit their own arms. Kids who would suddenly start twitching and banging their heads against a wall, not even stopping when the blood ran down their faces. Kids who waddled around oblivious to the stinking load in their own pants. Watching children like this, it was all too easy to see why their parents beat them. It was only natural to hate such kids, to ignore them and shower only your other children with love. Who wouldn't? But of course that wasn't the way it really worked. Such behaviors weren't the reasons parents abused children, but the results of abuse. Children are powerless. No matter how viciously they're beaten, children were powerless to do anything about it. Even if Mother hit them with a shoehorn or the hose of a vacuum cleaner or the handle of a kitchen knife, or strangled them or poured boiling water on them, they couldn't escape her; they couldn't even truly despise her. Children would struggle desperately to feel love for their parents. Rather than hate a parent, in fact, they'd choose to hate themselves. Love and violence became so intertwined for them that when they grew up and got into relationships, only hysteria could set their hearts at ease. Kindness, gentleness - anything along those lines just caused tension, since there was no telling when it would turn to overt hostility.
Ryū Murakami
Gentlemen, I like war. Gentlemen, I love war.I like genocide. I like blitzkrieg.I like aggressive war. I like defensive war.I like sieges. I like breaking through.I like withdrawing. I like cleaning up.I like retreating.In moors. On highways. In trenches.In plains. On tundra. In desert.On sea. In sky. In mud.In marshes.I love every aspect of war that takes place on Earth.
Kohta Hirano
[Rinda] often worried how she might make the coward she saw [in Remus] into a brave warrior, and someday, a king -- a task which she felt was her responsibility. Rinda had not yet realized that sometimes courage is the same thing as folly and that sometimes a skepticism bordering on her blindness to her brother's strengths was a result of her own sensitivity.
Kaoru Kurimoto
They dig holes from time to time,' the Colonel explains. 'It is probably for them what chess is for me. It has no special meaning, does not transport them anywhere. All of us dig at our own pure holes. We have nothing to achieve by our activities, nowhere to get to. Is there not something marvelous about this? We hurt no one and no one gets hurt. No victory, no defeat.
Haruki Murakami
Most people are full of themselves and speak only the obnoxiously superficial, in other words they're annoying as hell
Novala Takemoto
That is life's talent. To accept new things.
Hiroki Endo
Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.
Haruki Murakami
Peril-ridden and fragile, the imperfect human body, what a shameful thing it was!
Kenzaburō Ōe
Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.
Haruki Murakami
Better watch her. She burns other people's books.
Tsukumizu
Change yourself, and others will follow.
Kentetsu Takamori
Even now, whenever I think of her, I envision a quiet Sunday morning. A gentle, clear day, just getting under way. No homework to do, just a Sunday when you could do what you wanted. She always gave me this kick-back-and-relax, Sunday-morning kind of feeling.
Haruki Murakami
Hi! My little hutIs newly-thatched I see...Blue morning-glories
Kobayashi Issa
When she had him along, the world looked different, and she liked the way she saw things she'd never seen before. . . But she noticed other things, too -- the way she herself felt acutely visible with the baby in her arms, and the way some people's faces lit up when they saw a child. His warm weight was like living ballast, thrumming with energy, giving her substance. Folks were drawn to that.
Ruth Ozeki
We live our lives based on the assumption that we directly perceive, and are accurately interpreting, objects with a fair amount of accuracy. Since we naturally assume that we are apprehending objects of cognition as best as possible, it does not occur to us that we are purposely twisting the object before our eyes to fit our own convenience.
Tagawa Shun'ei
It was nothing but a hole, a mouth open wide. You could lean over the edge and peer down to see nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world’s darkness had been boiled down to their ultimate density.
Haruki Murakami
I can see clouds a thousand miles away, hear ancient music in the pines.
Ikkyu
The heart apparently doesn’t stop that easily.
Haruki Murakami
Dead my old fine hopesAnd dry my dreaming but still...Iris, blue each spring
Bashō Matsuo
Fighting isn't all there is to the Art of War. The men who think that way, and are satisfied to have food to eat and a place to sleep, are mere vagabonds. A serious student is much more concerned with training his mind and disciplining his spirit than with developing martial skills.
Eiji Yoshikawa
I'd like to have a good long talk with you once you've calmed down. Please call me soon. Happy Birthday.
Haruki Murakami
...We understood nothing at all. Not what it meant to wish for a miracle... nor its price.
Magica Quartet
In ancient times, people weren't just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much a thought. But then God took a knife and cut everybody in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing other half.
Haruki Murakami
People live their lives bound by what they accept as correct and true. That’s how they define Reality. But what does it mean to be “correct” or “true”? Merely vague concepts… Their Reality may all be a mirage. Can we consider them to simply be living in their own world, shaped by their beliefs?
Masashi Kishimoto
The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist ? It feels like it exists, but where is it ? And if it did exists, but doesn’t now, then where did it go ?
Ruth Ozeki
Since living is believing, no one can be completely lacking in faith.
Kentetsu Takamori
One day you will be the one called Master (Naruto). You'll be the one to treat others to ramen. We can't stay kids forever."- Shikamaru Nara (Naruto)
Masashi Kishimoto
Your heart is burning strong with righteous indignation... That flame is scattering sparks that may set fire elsewhere. That fire of yours will one day spread to others seeking a just world. The point is whether you have a torch in your heart or not. To light a fire to others.
Sui Ishida
You can't be born again, but you can change.
Natsuki Takaya
Everything seems pointless since you left
Haruki Murakami
He sure told you off, huh, Icy?" ~Darcy
VIZ Media
It's only natural to feel lonely after the enjoyable moments pass. But as you experience new joys those feelings of sorrow will start to fade.
Mizu Sahara