Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 32

It was the face of a human being who’d been constructed exclusively of wounds. Not time or history or ambition, nothing but wounds. The face of a person who could probably kill someone without feeling anything whatsoever.
Ryū Murakami
It is painful for the plant which is myself to live in the atmosphere and light of this world. Somewhere an element is lacking which would permit me to continue.
Osamu Dazai
If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals . . . We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs. We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us -- create who we are. It is we who created the system. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009)
Haruki Murakami
Even in zazen you will lose yourself. When you become sleepy, or when your mind starts to wander about, you lose yourself. When your legs become painful—“Why are my legs so painful?”—you lose yourself. ”-“You just sit in the midst of the problem; when you are a part of the problem, or when the problem is a part of you, there is no problem, because you are the problem itself. The problem is you yourself. If this is so, there is no problem.”-“When you start to wander about in some delusion which is something apart from you yourself, then your surroundings are not real anymore, and your mind is not real anymore. If you yourself are deluded, then your surroundings are also a misty, foggy delusion. Once you are in the midst of delusion, there is no end to delusion. You will be involved in deluded ideas one after another. Most people live in delusion, involved in their problem, trying to solve their problem. But just to live is actually to live in problems. And to solve the problem is to be a part of it, to be one with it.
Shunryu Suzuki
Novelists congratulate themselves on their creation of this kind of “character” or that kind of “character,” and readers pretend to talk knowingly about “character,” but all it amounts to is that the writers are enjoying themselves writing lies and the readers are enjoying themselves reading lies. In fact, there is no such thing as character, something fixed and final. The real thing is something that novelists don’t know how to write about. Or, if they tried, the end result would never be a novel. Real people are strangely difficult to make sense out of. Even a god would have his hands full trying.
Sōseki Natsume
When we take our clothes in our hands and fold them neatly, we are, I believe, transmitting energy, which has a positive effect on our clothes. Folding properly pulls the cloth taut and erases wrinkles, and makes the material stronger and more vibrant. Clothes that have been neatly folded have a resilience and sheen that can be discerned immediately, clearly distinguishing them from those that have been haphazardly stuffed in a drawer. The act of folding is far more than making clothes compact for storage. It is an act of caring, an expression of love and appreciation for the way these clothes support your lifestyle. Therefore, when we fold, we should put our heart into it, thanking our clothes for protecting our bodies.
Marie Kondō
It is cognition that is the fantasy.... Everything I tell you now is mere words. Arrange them and rearrange them as I might, I will never be able to explain to you the form of Will... My explanation would only show the correlation between myself and that Will by means of a correlation on the verbal level. The negation of cognition thus correlates to the negation of language. For when those two pillars of Western humanism, individual cognition and evolutionary continuity, lose their meaning, language loses meaning. Existence ceases for the individuum as we know it, and all becomes chaos. You cease to be a unique entity unto yourself, but exist simply as chaos. And not just the chaos that is you; your chaos is also my chaos. To wit, existence is communication, and communication, existence.
Haruki Murakami
You have someone in your life whom you honor and revere so much that every hurt on them is inflicted on you as well. And the closer they are to you, the greater the pain.
Masashi Kishimoto
Now, Kieli believed in the words 'no matter what.' Maybe there weren't really any 'no matter whats' in this world, but right now, she believed that there were with all her heart.
Yukako Kabei
It would take a civilization far more advanced than ours, unbelievably advanced, to begin to manipulate negative energy to create gateways to the past. But if you could obtain large quantities of negative energy—and that's a big “IF”—then you could create a time machine that apparently obeys Einstein's equation and perhaps the laws of quantum theory.
Michio Kaku
It can't be anyone but youI always wondered whyA million "thank you"'s piled upAnd before I knew it, it was loveI was in love with you
Kozue Chiba
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
There are certain questions that scientists may not ask, or, more accurately, for some questions, there are certain answers that scientists must a priori preclude from consideration.
Satoshi Kanazawa
IF YOU WISH TO BRING PEACE UPON YOUR OWN, YOU MUST FIGHT THOSE WHO WISH FOR THE SAME PEACE.
Isayama Hajime
To be strong and true had been the most important task he had set himself since early childhood.Once, as a boy, he had tried to outstare the sun. But before he could tell whether he had really looked at it or not, changes had occurred: the blazing red ball that had been there at first began to whirl, then suddenly dimmed, till it became a cold, bluish-black, flattened disk of iron. He felt he had seen the very essence of the sun.... For a while, wherever he looked he saw the sun's pale afterimage: in the undergrowth; in the shade beneath the trees; even, when he gazed up, in every part of the sky. The truth was something too dazzling to be looked at directly. And yet, once it had come into one's field of vision, one saw patches of light in all kinds of places: the afterimages of virtue.
Yukio Mishima
A woman's happiness is in throwing everything away to live for love.
Ai Yazawa
Laziness is the mother of all bad habits, but ultimately she is a mother and we should respect her
Shikamaru Nara
This dewdrop world Is but a dewdrop worldAnd yet —
Kobayashi Issa
She's strong! And scary...I bet she's single...I'd put money on it..
Masashi Kishimoto
The world looks different through a smiling face and a crying face, you know? That is, if you have the power to smile through difficult times, then you have nothing to fear. Even hell becomes heaven for you.
Hideaki Sorachi
I wonder if I have ever actually been happy. People have told me, really more times than I can remember, ever since I was a small boy, how lucky I was, but I have always felt as if I were suffering in hell. It has seemed to me in fact that those who called me lucky were incomparably more fortunate than I.
Osamu Dazai
By putting his hand around my neck he slowly strangled himself.
Minako Ohba
What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood. He knew he was close to completing and so that's what he was doing: getting me to describe things to him, so they'd really sink in, so that maybe during those sleepless nights, with the drugs and the paint and the exhaustion, the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his.
Kazuo Ishiguro
But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.
Kazuo Ishiguro
They say it's a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of writers - and I'm talking the most talented - are able to pull off the irrational synthesis you find in dreams.
Haruki Murakami
One is reminded in this connection of a story concerning Kobori-Enshiu. Enshiu was complimented by his disciples on the admirable taste he had displayed in the choice of his [art] collection. Said they, "Each piece is such that no one could help admiring. It shows that you had better taste than had Rikiu, for his collection could only be appreciated by one beholder in a thousand." Sorrowfully Enshiu replied: "This only proves how commonplace I am. The great Rikiu dared to love only those objects which personally appealed to him, whereas I unconsciously cater to the taste of the majority. Verily, Rikiu was one in a thousand among tea-masters.
Kakuzō Okakura
I contemplate the bones for a while then turn away. I have work to do. Next year I will have an odako that is bigger, grander, more beautiful than anyone has ever seen. Next year.
Stan Sakai
To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, a life. To exist here, now, means to lost the possibility of being countless other potential selves.. Yet once being born there is no turning back. And I think that's exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us.
Hayao Miyazaki
The second whiskey is always my favorite. From the third on, it no longer has any taste. It's just something to pour into your stomach.
Haruki Murakami
A man who wields a pen has to be accountable to society.
Shūsaku Endō
There are apparently two hypotheses about jealousy: that it is a product of civilization and that it is a basic instinct of animals.
Kōbō Abe
I know that happy things and fun things eventually come to an end. But things that are scary and sad come to an end, too. They always do. Even if you can’t always believe that…please don’t give up. Live. I want you to live. Even if you make a mistake. Even if you take the long way. It’s still okay. Just please…please, live. Don’t give up on pushing forward. Please. At least don’t give up on that. Even if I’m not by your side, it’s still okay. It’s okay.
Natsuki Takaya
The only real flesh was the flesh that existed in his imagination. Since, therefore, he regarded the flesh as an ideal abstraction, rather than as a physical fact, he had relied on his spiritual strength to subjugate it.
Yukio Mishima
It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.
Haruki Murakami
He would eventually have to pass through the forest, but he felt no fear. Of course - the forest was inside him, he knew, and it made him who he was.
Haruki Murakami
Three times now... We've fought world wars for our own nations, our own villages. We've hurt one another. We've hated one another. That hatred bred a lust for power, and that lust for power created ME. I was a Jinchuuriki, the embodiment of hatred and power. And I hated this world, and all the people in it... I wanted to destroy it with my own hands. The exact same thing Akatsuki is trying to do today. But one man, one ninja from Konoha stopped me. I was his enemy, yet he wept for me! I hurt him, yet he called me his friend! He saved me! My enemy, my fellow Jinchuuriki... He suffered the same pain as me, yet bore no ill will! There are no enemies here because we've all suffered at Akatsuki's hand! SO THERE IS NO SAND, NO STONE, NO LEAF, NO MIST, NO CLOUD! THERE ARE ONLY SHINOBI! And if you still hold a grudge against the Sand, then when this war is over, come and take my head instead! Our enemies are after the friend who saved my life! If they take him, if we hand him over, our world is finished! I want to protect him, and I want to protect our world! But I'm too young to protect it all on my own! All of you lend me your aid!
Masashi Kishimoto
The third dream was hard to put into words. It was a rambling, incoherent dream without any setting. All that was there was a feeling of being in motion. Aomame was ceaselessly moving through time and space It didn't matter when or where this was All that mattered was this movement. Everything was fluid, and a specific meaning was born of that fluidity. But as she gave herself up to it, she found her body growing transparent. She could see through her hands to the other side. Her bones, organs, and womb became visible. At this rate she might very well no longer exist. After she could no longer see herself, Aomame wondered what could possibly come then. She had no answer.
Haruki Murakami
When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots - it is not yet painting Spring.
Dōgen
If rewriting equals rereading, we must logically conclude that writing is reading. If this is indeed the case, how could we possibly write under a ban on reading? The only way left is mouth-to-mouth – poets and storytellers recite their pieces and before we can commit them to memory, everything vanishes into thin air.
Kyoko Yoshida
On the Brevity of Our TiesTies in this world last only for a time. We are husband and wife, parent and child, for a short period only. Once this reality sinks in, we cannot help treasuring each moment of our brief association.
Kentetsu Takamori
But sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you've worked towards, the life you've carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you're left with a wound you can't heal on your own and can't believe you'll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that - a lot of time - and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory. You tough it out moment by moment, hour by hour, and after some weeks or months you begin to see signs of recovery. Slowly the wound heals into a scar.
Ryū Murakami
Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time.
Haruki Murakami
Thus we see that the all important thing is not killing or giving life, drinking or not drinking, living in the town or the country, being unlucky or lucky, winning or losing. It is how we win, how we lose, how we live or die, finally, how we choose.
R.H. Blyth
She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.
Haruki Murakami
I wonder why people you have to meet have to be such liars. They lie as if their lives depended on it.
Ryū Murakami
As I suspect is true of many who write for a living, as I write I think about all sorts of things. I don't necessarily write down what I'm thinking; it's just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths.
Haruki Murakami
A deaf composer's like a cook who's lost his sense of taste. A frog that's lost its webbed feet. A truck driver with his license revoked. That would throw anybody for a loop, don't you think? But Beethoven didn't let it get to him. Sure, he must have been a little depressed at first, but he didn't let misfortune get him down. It was like, Problem? What problem? He composed more than ever and came up with better music than anything he'd ever written. I really admire the guy. Like this Archduke Trio--he was nearly deaf when he wrote it, can you believe it? What I'm trying to say is, it must be tough on you not being able to read, but it's not the end of the world. You might not be able to read, but there are things only you can do. That's what you gotta focus on--your strengths. Like being able to talk with the stone.
Haruki Murakami
The color of the flower has faded, while I lost myself in idle thought in this long rain / 花の色は うつりにけりな いたづらに わが身世にふる ながめせし間に
Ono no Komachi
I look around me sometimes and I get sick to my stomach. Why the hell don't these bastards do something? I wonder. They don't do a damn thing, and then they bitch.
Haruki Murakami
In ancient times people weren't just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, or 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 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
I think of human existence as being like a two-story house. On the rst oor people gather together to take their meals, watch television, and talk. e second oor contains private chambers, bedrooms where people go to read books, listen to music by themselves, and so on. en there is a basement;this is a special place, and there are a number of things stored here. We don’t use this room much in our daily life, but some- times we come in, vaguely hang around the place. en, my thought is that underneath that basement room is yet another basement room. is one has a very special door, very di - cult to gure out, and normally you can’t get in there—some people never get in at all. . . . You go in, wander about in the darkness, and experience things there you wouldn’t see in the normal parts of the house. You connect with your past there, because you have entered into your own soul. But then you come back. If you stay over there for long you can never get back to reality.
Haruki Murakami
The crimes of children reproduce themselves, closing their victims in cages built of nightmares.
Miri Yū
It's not right for one friend to do all the giving and the other to do all the taking: that's not read friendship.
Haruki Murakami
Then you are a poet?' she asked, fingering the flyer in her pocket.'No not at all,' he waved his hand. 'I am merely a character in a poem.
Karen Tei Yamashita
But still," Ayumi said, "it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.""You may be right," Aomame said, "But it's too late to trade it in for another one.
Haruki Murakami
The best way to contorl 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
Were the stars out when I left the house last evening? All I could remember was the couple in the Skyline listening to Duran Duran. Stars? Who remembers stars? Come to think of it, had I even looked up at the sky recently? Had the stars been wiped out of the sky three months ago, I wouldn't have known. The only things I noticed were silver bracelets on women's wrists and popsicle sticks in potted rubber plants. There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night. No car, no car stereo, no silver bracelets, no shuffling, no dark blue tweed suits.My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless—a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic. Indecipherable except to some machine.My first circuit must have been wearing thin. My real memories were receding into planar projection, the screen of consciousness losing all identity.
Haruki Murakami
Mr. Sagunuma: We can never escape who we are. Instead of wasting time worrying about it, why don't you cut to he chase and love yourself?
Bisco Hatori
Architecture (is) a theatre stage setting where the leading actors are the people and to dramatically direct the dialogue between these people and space is the technique of designing.
Kisho Kurokawa
Anyone who sang the praises of undying love in this day and age belonged to the first rank of hypocrites in Daisuke's estimate.
Sōseki Natsume