Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 29

The philosophy that prepares a revolution and the sentiment that underpins the philosophy have, in every case the two pillars of nihilism and mysticism.
Yukio Mishima
Next she turned the gun upward and thrust the muzzle into her mouth. Now it was aimed directly at her cerebrum-- the gray labyrinth where consciousness resided.
Haruki Murakami
It is senseless to blame others or your environment for your miseries. Change begins from the moment you muster the courage to act. When you change, the environment will change. The power to change the world is found nowhere but within our own life.
Daisaku Ikeda
We are ever brutal to those who love and serve us in silence, but the time may come when, for our cruelty, we shall be deserted by these best friends of ours.
Kakuzō Okakura
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few
Shunryu Suzuki
The majority of people dismiss those things that lie beyond the bounds of their own understanding as absurd and not worth thinking about. I myself can only wish that my stories were, indeed, nothing but incredible fabrications. I have stayed alive all these years clinging to the frail hope that these memories of mine were nothing but a dream or a delusion. I have struggled to convince myself that they never happened. But each time I tried to push them into the dark, they came back stronger and more vivid than ever. Like cancer cells, these memories have taken root in my mind and eaten into my flesh.
Haruki Murakami
There are people who kill, and people who get killed.
Otsuichi
And sometimes ignorance is even harder to deal with than deliberate evil.
Ryū Murakami
Are you a terrorist? Or just an idiot?
Wataru Watari
Fast rather than slow, more rather than less--this flashy "development" is linked directly to society's impending collapse. It has only served to separate man from nature. Humanity must stop indulging the desire for material possessions and personal gain and move instead toward spiritual awareness.Agriculture must change from large mechanical operations to small farms attached only to life itself. Material life and diet should be given a simple place. If this is done, work becomes pleasant, and spiritual breathing space becomes plentiful.
Masanobu Fukuoka
We men have always fought to protect others... since the ancient times. Even though we were naked, and only had sticks and stones to defend ourselves... we still had the elderly, the young, our wives, friends, family, and homes... and to protect all of that we braved any danger, no matter what... and fought! And even among those cavemen there were useless failures! Just like how we are today! But in the end, even they gathered their courage, and fought! And, not surprisingly, being incompetent... they were killed! Even thought it was the death of an idiot... it was also... the death of a selfless hero!
Nobuyuki Fukumoto
I mutter and mutter and no one to listen. I speak my words in Japanese and my daughter will not hear them. The words that come from our ears, our mouths, they collide in the space between us."Obachan, please! I wish you would stop that. Is it too much to ask for some peace and quiet? You do this on purpose, don’t you? Don’t you! I just want some peace. Just stop! Please, just stop.""Gomennasai. Waruine, Obachan wa. Solly. Solly."Ha! Keiko, there is method in my madness. I could stand on my head and quote Shakespeare until I had a nosebleed, but to no avail, no one hears my language. So I sit and say the words and will, until the wind or I shall die. Someone, something must stand against this wind and I will. I am.
Hiromi Goto
How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal father?
Ruth Ozeki
The essence of your mind is not born, so it will never die. It is not an existence, which is perishable. It is not an emptiness, which is a mere void. It has neither colour nor form. It enjoys no pleasures and suffers no pains.I know you are very ill. Like a good Zen student, you are facing that sickness squarely. You may not know exactly who is suffering, but question yourself: What is the essence of this mind? Think only of this. You will need no more. Covet nothing. Your end which is endless is as a snowflake dissolving in pure air.
Bassui Takusho
In the novelist's profession, as far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as winning or losing. Maybe numbers of copies sold, awards won, and critics' praise serve as outward standards for accomplishment in literature, but none of them really matter. What's crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you've set for yourself. Failure to reach that bar is not something you can easily explain away. When it comes to other people, you can always come up with a reasonable explanation, but you can't fool yourself. In this sense, writing novels and running full marathons are very much alike.
Haruki Murakami
Girls have periods and boys wank. Everybody.
Haruki Murakami
I could go on like this forever, but would I ever find a place that was meant for me? Like, for example, where? After lengthy considerations, the only place I could think of was the cockpit of a two-seater Kamikaze torpedo-plane. Of all the dumb ideas. In the first place, all the torpedo-planes were scrapped thirty years ago
Haruki Murakami
What is Zen? Zen means doing anything perfectly, making mistakes perfectly, being defeated perfectly, hesitating perfectly, doing anything perfectly or imperfectly, perfectly. What is the meaning of this perfectly? How does it differ from perfectly? Perfectly is in the will; perfectly is in the activity. Perfectly means that at each moment of the activity there is no egoism in it… our pain is not only our own pain; it is the pain of the universe. The joy of the universe is also our joy. Our failure and misjudgment is that of nature, which never hopes or despairs, but keeps on trying. R. H. Blyth
R.H. Blyth
...I gotta burn these scales... sigh*
Hiroko Sakai
To speak conventionally - and I think it is easier for the general reader to see Zen thus presented - there are unknown recesses in our minds which lie beyond the threshold of the relatively constructed consciousness. To designate them as “sub-conciousness” or “supra-consciousness” is not correct. The word “beyond” is used simply because it is a most convenient term to indicate their whereabouts. But as a matter of fact there is no “beyond”, no “underneath”, no “upon” in our consciousness. The mind is one indivisible whole and cannot be torn in pieces. The so-called terra incognita is the concession of Zen to our ordinary way of talking, because whatever field of consciousness that is known to us is generally filled with conceptual riffraff, and to get rid of them, which is absolutely necessary for maturing Zen experience, the Zen psychologist sometimes points to the presence of some inaccessible region in our minds. Though in actuality there is no such region apart from our everyday consciousness, we talk of it as generally more easily comprehensible by us.
D.T. Suzuki
As she sustained wound after wound...the fairy should have fallen, but instead, she danced. This was Titania, the Fairy Queen.
Hiro Mashima
Radical Edwards's profile? He's a seven-foot tall ex-basketball pro hindu guru drag-queen alien.-Jet Black, from the Cowboy Bebop anime script
Keiko Nobumoto
Nothing can be gained by extensive study and wide reading. Give them up immediately.
Dōgen
Don't think that your first love has to be your only love.
Yukiru Sugisaki
It was as if a tiny crack had opened somewhere in him and was growing, tearing him to pieces. If he had simply been angry, I might have found a way to calm him, but I had no idea how to put him back together once he came apart.
Yōko Ogawa
Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.
Miyamoto Musashi
I always feel myself being thrust back into loneliness when someone tells me it's cold on a hot day. It isn't good to talk so much about the weather — weather is a highly personal matter, and communication on the subject inevitably fails.
Yōko Tawada
Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time.
Haruki Murakami
We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever.
Haruki Murakami
The average novel invariably reads like a detective's report. It is drab and tedious because it is never objective.
Sōseki Natsume
I think genre rules should be porous, if not nonexistent.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Until I met you," she said, "I never realized how precious each day could be. When I was working, each day was over before I knew it, and then a week just flew by, and then a whole year...What have I been doing all this time? Why didn't I meet you before? If I had to choose a whole year in the past, or a day with you-I'd choose a day with you...
Shūichi Yoshida
Tatsuya: What you have "right now" won't necessarily continue on until forever...Hiro: ... Yeah, I know.
Ibuki Haneda
Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort.
Yōko Ogawa
Become like the sun. If you do so, all darkness will be dispelled. No matter what happens, live confidently with the conviction that you, yourself are the “sun.” Of course, in life there are sunny days and cloudy days. But even on cloudy days, the sun is still there. Even when you are suffering, it is vital that you strive to keep the sun shining brightly in your heart.
Daisaku Ikeda
I want to believe that memories, even sad and painful ones, should not be forgotten forever.
Natsuki Takaya
After listening to a lot of these stories, I began to think that American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born Japanese. The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different from the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there.
Ryū Murakami
Presently a soprano voice of richness and depth floated from the open windows of the parlor, resonating over the darkening greenery. All at once it was as if the entire scene before them was awakened by that voice, infused with unexpected life: the western sky, streaked with bands of pale gold and purple; the two houses, standing gray and disconsolate against that sky; the clusters of trees casting deep black shadows here and there across the ground. The same voice that brought everything suddenly to life also drew them into another, much deeper world—a world that was normally hidden, a world that stretched out into eternity. Yusuke, who had at first looked on with a sense of distance as everyone else sat listening, their faces intent on the music, found himself being gradually drawn in as well, forgetting the moment and the place, lending his ear during that unworldly stretch of time as if entranced. No one spoke. The singing could not have lasted ten minutes, but when it ended he found the darkness all at once grew deeper.
Minae Mizumura
Since language produces meaning within an enclosed system, there is always a built-in untranslatability, which national languages began to deliberately pursue. The process added to the creation of an untranslatable "reality" that can be expresses only in a particular language. It also added to the discovery of untranslatable "truths.
Minae Mizumura
If there's any guy crazy enough to attack me, I'm going to show him the end of the world -- close up. I'm going to let him see the kingdom come with his own eyes. I'm going to send him straight to the southern hemisphere and let the ashes of death rain all over him and the kangaroos and the wallabies.
Haruki Murakami
In olden times there were warriors, farmers, craftsmen, and merchants. Agriculture was said to be closer to the source of things than trade or manufacturing, and the farmer was said to be "the cupbearer of the gods." He was always able to get by somehow or other and have enough to eat.
Masanobu Fukuoka
Everything hinges on the Christ of the cross. The fact of the cross is the axiom of theological thought. It is impossible to think about the gospel if we have the slightest hesitation on this point. We must determine to carry this theme throughout all the problems of theology without exception... The essence of God can be comprehended only from the 'word of the cross.
Kazoh Kitamori
Water: 35 liters, Carbon: 20 kg, Ammonia: 4 liters, Lime:1.5 kg, Phosphrus: 800 g, salt: 250g, saltpeter:100g, Sulfer: 80g, Fluorine: 7.5 g, iron: 5.6 g, Silicon: 3g, and 15 other elements in small quantities.... thats the total chemical makeup of the average adult body. Modern science knows all of this, but there has never been a single example of succesful human trasmutation. It's like there's some missing ingredient..... Scientists have been trying to find it for hundreds of years, pouring tons of money into research, and to this day they don't have a theory. For that matter, the elements found in a human being is all junk that you can buy in any market with a child's allowence. Humans are pretty cheaply made.
Hiromu Arakawa
The privilege of struggling artists is ... the life being buried in what we can't really afford of* what a gorgeous life!!
Hiroko Sakai
Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called "mind-only," or "essence of mind," or "big mind," After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life.
Shunryu Suzuki
The wood-carver can fashion whatever he will. Yet his products are but toys of the moment, to be glanced at in jest, not fashioned according to any precept or law. When times change, the carver too will change his style and make new trifles to hit the fancy of the passing day. But there is another kind of artist, who sets more soberly about his work, striving to give real beauty to the things which men actually use and to give to them the shape which tradition has ordained. This maker of real things must not for a moment be confused with the maker of idle toys.
Murasaki Shikibu
I was a vacant room. Inside, the music produces only a dry, hollow echo.
Haruki Murakami
People do change. And no matter how close we once were, and how much we opened up to each other, maybe neither of us know anything substantial about the other.
Haruki Murakami
It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she was gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.
Haruki Murakami
I couldn't reach him from here even if I tried.
Yōko Ogawa
I'm still not sure I made the right choice when I told my wife about the bakery attack.But then,it might not have been a question of right or wrong. Which is to say that wrong choices can produce right results, and vice versa. I myself have adopted the position that,in fact, we never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not.
Haruki Murakami
The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring - and all of the acts carried out - on this earth. But the moon remained silent; it told no stories. All it did was embrace the heavy past with a cool, measured detachment. On the moon there was neither air nor wind. Its vacuum was perfect for preserving memories unscathed. No one could unlock the heart of the moon. Aomame raised her glass to the moon and asked, “Have you gone to bed with someone in your arms lately?” The moon did not answer. “Do you have any friends?” she asked. The moon did not answer. “Don’t you get tired of always playing it cool?”The moon did not answer.
Haruki Murakami
My fury was lofty, pure, cool. It was an emotion that none of these people, struggling so hard to impose a shape on life when life has no shape, could begin to understand.
Banana Yoshimoto
No, I am not imagining a book-burning, warmongering, anti-intellectual fascist regime – in my plan, there is no place for re ghters who light up the Homers and Lady Murasakis and Cao Xueqins stashed under your bed – because, for starters, I’m not banning literature per se. I’m banning the reading of literature. Purchasing and collecting books and other forms of literature remains perfectly legitimate as long as you don’t peruse the literature at hand.
Kyoko Yoshida
I’ll try just putting one foot in front of the other, and walk a step at a time without rushing. So I can burn the path into my memory while I can still see it. So that when all this is over, I can find my way back. Because I intend to come back. Hopefully with all of us together.
Yukako Kabei
When you beat a drum, you create NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you're breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and the thunder.
Ruth Ozeki
At the same time that 'I' am the content of a relation, 'I' am also that which does the relating.
Haruki Murakami
When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.
Masanobu Fukuoka
The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one’s eyes without seeing anything.
Haruki Murakami
Yes -- or rather, it's not so much that I want to die as that I'm tired of living.
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa