Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 24

Freedom is taking control of the rudder of your life.
Yukito Kishiro
Does one really have to fretAbout enlightenment?No matter what road I travel,I’m going home.
Shinsho
Shigure: We have just witnessed a classic example of what I like to call 'misdirected rage'. I believe the technical term is being an ass.
Natsuki Takaya
Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can't ever lose.
Ruth Ozeki
I don't know if ghouls are allowed to live either. But there has to be a reason we exist.
Sui Ishida
Culture is an elevated expression of the inner voice which the different peoples of the Earth have heard in the depths of their being, a voice which conveys the vibrant compassion and wisdom of the cosmic life. For different cultures to engage in interaction is to catalyze each other's souls and foster mutual understanding.
Daisaku Ikeda
That’s what violence was: emotion leaking out from consciousness into the physical world, linking up with the muscles of the arms and shoulders and diaphragm and, inevitably, the face. Stifle emotion during an act of violence and the face becomes a blank, unreadable mask.
Ryū Murakami
You all have your own distinct personal backgrounds. Of course some of you come from rich families, some from poor families. But circumstances beyond your control like that shouldn’t determine who you are. You must all realize what you’re worth on your own.
Koushun Takami
Rather than ask yourself if you are correct, it is far more realistic to think about how you are mistaken. Most humans have not been designed to be right very often.
Kouhei Kadono
Lack of wisdom does not make a fool. A fool, in the truest sense, is the man who regards his own misfortunes or those of others as a source of doubt or criticism of the infinite mercy of the Gohonzon.-Josei Toda
Daisaku Ikeda
People do change. And no matter how close we once were, and how much we opened up to each other, maybe neither if us know anything substantial about the other.
Haruki Murakami
I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prision. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key.
Haruki Murakami
Bliss and suffering, it seems, always go hand in hand.
Kentetsu Takamori
Forgetting about our mistakes and our wounds isn't enough to make them disappear.
Ai Yazawa
Kaede: I know this, ungrateful dog. In order to find the sacred jewel shards, Kagome's spirtual power is essential. Yet ye made her upset with your words an sent her running homeInuYasha: That was her idea! she chose to go home! She said: "I'm going home! You jerk!"Kaede: InuYasha, that imitation was pathetic.InuYasha: I'm a demon, not a comedian!
Rumiko Takahashi
There was once a tiger-striped cat. This cat died a million deaths, and lived a million lives, and in those lives, various people owned him. None of those people he cared for. This cat was not afraid of death. One life, the cat became a stray cat, which meant it was free. And it met a white female cat. They became mates, and lived together. Time passed, the white cat passed away of old age. And the tiger- striped cat cried a million times. Eventually, the cat died again. But this time, it didn't come back to life.
Keiko Nobumoto
Life is long, and sometimes cruel. Sometimes victims are needed. Someone has to take on that role. And human bodies are fragile, easily damaged. Cut them, and they bleed.
Haruki Murakami
A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions(...)if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is consolation - indeed, deep satisfaction - to be gained from his observation when looking back over one's life.#Page no.134
Kazuo Ishiguro
For the first time in my life I realized what a horrible, miserable, salvationless hell it is to be without money.
Osamu Dazai
The Homunculi may have started the war, but we were the ones who carried it out.
Hiromu Arakawa
I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die,” she said. “I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live.
Haruki Murakami
Why does that kid think so highly of himself?""Kids that think they're so smart.They're everywhere! Destroy is self-esteem!""Yes...I really do think highly of myself.People like me should get a taste of the ups and downs of life! Sorry I'm so envious.I will reflect upon this. Please don't be angry."Ah..um..""There, I said it now. Are you satisfied?" ........"Bye
Natsuki Takaya
The only thing I’d understand right from the very beginning was that our love was supported by loneliness. That neither one of us could haul ourselves up out of the deadly numbness we felt when we lay together, so silent, in darkness so isolating it seemed to shine. This was the edge of night.
Banana Yoshimoto
You fueled my obession, even encouraged it and your selfishness ruined my life
Novala Takemoto
If animal history has been a history of evolution, then the history of mankind is one of retrogression. Hooray for monsters! Monsters are the great embodiments of the weak.
Kōbō Abe
A different species a different set of values a world completely unlike your own. There is a feeling you can only get when you meet the unknown and open your mind. - Nakajima (Gin no Saji)
Hiromu Arakawa
Otani: Oh... I didn't get you a Christmas present. Risa: But you already gave me something.Otani: Huh? I didn't give you anything.Risa: It was something wonderful. 'I seem to like you much more than I realized'.
Atsushi Otani
I will take away your means of escape.
Natsuki Takaya
As the bell rang he would look back at the departing year. He always found it a moving experience. Sometimes he was racked by sorrow and regret. Even when the sentimentality of the announcers repelled him, the tolling of the bells echoed in his heart.
Yasanuri Kawabata
In the morning After taking cold shower —-what a mistake—- I look at the mirror.There, a funny guy, Grey hair, white beard, wrinkled skin, —-what a pity—- Poor, dirty, old man, He is not me, absolutely not.Land and life Fishing in the ocean Sleeping in the desert with stars Building a shelter in the mountains Farming the ancient way Singing with coyotes Singing against nuclear war— I’ll never be tired of life. Now I’m seventeen years old, Very charming young man.I sit quietly in lotus position, Meditating, meditating for nothing. Suddenly a voice comes to me: “To stay young, To save the world, Break the mirror.
Nanao Sakaki
What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.
Yukio Mishima
As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.
Banana Yoshimoto
History cannot be erased or altered.Because that would mean killing yourself.
Haruki Murakami
No one particular religion has been able to secure the exclusive rights for the power of prayer. No matter who you are, we all have the ability to take advantage of this amazing and wonderful power. Once you realize this, you will then be filled with the desire to help others realize this as well. More and more people are resonating with this understanding, and this could result in a more wonderful future for mankind. (165)
Masaru Emoto
He calmed himself, shut his eyes, and fell asleep. The rear light of consciousness, like the last express train of the night, began to fade into the distance, gradually speeding up, growing smaller until it was, finally, sucked into the depths of night, where it disappeared. All that remained was the sound of the wind slipping through a stand of white birch trees.
Haruki Murakami
I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.
Haruki Murakami
Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning 'love' in this world. It is the effort to join reality with the apparition.
Yukio Mishima
Mogi: Greg Parker left the hideout a while ago and bought a large amount of food. He's heading back to the hideout now. And I've been able to ascertain that he purchased multiple boxes of the same brand chocolate.Aizowa: That clinches it.Ide: It feels a little strange that chocolate is the deciding factor here.
Tsugumi Ohba
Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s what part of it means to be alive. But inside our heads — at least that’s where I imagine it — there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let fresh air in, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live for ever in your own private library.
Haruki Murakami
...But it is also told that Niuka forgot to fill two tiny crevices in the blue firmament. Thus began the dualism of love--two souls rolling through space and never at rest until they join together to complete the universe. Everyone has to build anew his sky of hope and peace.
Kakuzō Okakura
As a child I first became aware that my existence had a purpose when I realized men lusted after me. And that's why I will lust forever after men. Before I even began to worry about homework or any of those school things, I began having secret liaisons with men. And it is men who give me the proof I need now to feel I'm alive.
Natsuo Kirino
Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.
Haruki Murakami
I wanted to have a good relationship. One that's romantic and dramatic, like in the movies. But I finally became a woman at 17 and learned that men aren't really that simple.
Ai Yazawa
In his or her own way, everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.
Haruki Murakami
A mere two days without eating and you passed out. It must be tough not being able to photosynthesize.
Tsutomu Nihei
Give them back! Give my tears back, right now——with interest!!
Natsuki Takaya
Society. I felt as though even I were beginning at last to acquire some vague notion of what it meant. It is a struggle between one individual to another, a then-and-there struggle, in which the immediate triumph is everything. ‘Human beings never submit to human beings.’ Even slaves practice their mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except of a single then-and-there contest. They speak of duty to one’s country and such like things, but the object of their effort is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individuals.
Osamu Dazai
I always thought I wasn't afraid to die. No... no one is afraid of death itself. Your pain and suffering is over in an instant. What really makes me suffer... Is seeing you crying over me... From the darkness of the Milky Way.I'm sorry... Please don't make that face. You look best shdn you're smiling, you know.
Inio Asano
Otaku (おた) is also a formal way of saying "you". た means "house", and with the honorific お, it literally means "your honorable house", implying that you are less of a person and more of a place, fixed in space and contained under a roof. Makes sense that the stereotype of the modern otaku is a shut-in, an obsessed loner and social isolate who rarely leaves his house.
Ruth Ozeki
Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.
Mineko Iwasaki
Once you've recognized your own limits, you've raised yourself to a higher level of being, since you're closer to the real you...
Banana Yoshimoto
One master defines Zen as the art of feeling the polar star in the southern sky. Truth can be reached only through the comprehension of opposites.
Kakuzō Okakura
The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now. Not for the person we were in the past.
Marie Kondō
I never once thought I wanted to be a soldier. I wanted to be a teacher. As soon as I left college, though, they sent me my draft notice, stuck me in officers training, and I ended up on the continent for twelve years. My life went by like a dream.
Haruki Murakami
it's a fine moon', she repeated
Haruki Murakami
Clinging to one’s outward appearance interferes with living.
Kōbō Abe
I wish Italy would stop being a crybaby. I wish he would kick his bad habit of wanting to eat pasta everywhere. I wish he would stop getting a stomachache every time he ate geleto. I wish he would learn to throw a grenade properly. I wish his older brother would stop trying to punch me. I wish-"*babble babble babble*"Germany . . . That's impossible . . .
Hidekaz Himaruya
Even though my angel has forgiven me and rescued me, who on earth will save him, who cannot be allowed into the light of the sun, who has lost his name, who can only hide himself in the world of darkness?
Mizuki Nomura
It's a dark, cool, quiet place. A basement in your soul. And that place can sometimes be dangerous to the human mind. I can open the door and enter that darkness, but I have to be very careful. I can find my story there. Then I bring that thing to the surface, into the real world.
Haruki Murakami
People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water.
Akira Kurosawa