Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 4

Why is it that the beautiful things are entwined more deeply with death than with life?
Sui Ishida
The cold feel of the leather...Peeking at the world from my other eye...It was strangely exciting...
Sui Ishida
After being hurt by the world so much, they began to see the demons within humans. So without hiding it through trickery, they worked to express it.
Osamu Dazai
I saw the sky and sea and sand and the flickering flames of the bonfire through my tears. All at once, it rushed into my head with tremendous speed, and made me feel dizzy. It was beautiful. Everything that happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.
Banana Yoshimoto
Kusanagi had met plenty of good, admirable people who’d been turned into murderers by circumstance. There was something about them he always seemed to sense, an aura that they shared. Somehow, their transgression freed them from the confines of a mortal existence, allowing them to perceive the great truths of the universe. At the same time, it meant they had one foot in forbidden territory. They straddled the line between sanity and madness.
Keigo Higashino
If everyone could feel as I felt at that moment, dressed in my preppy sweater and McGregor coat and about to set out on a little journey with my Bambi-eyed girlfriend on Christmas Eve, all conflicts in the world would vanish. Mellow smiles would rule the earth.
Ryū Murakami
It seemed unreasonable, unfair, that a woman so young and beautiful should be so exhausted. Of course, it was neither unreasonable nor unfair. Exhaustion pays no mind to age and beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods.
Haruki Murakami
Personally, I like to sleep. And I intend to appropriately confine myself more and more to my living quarters and pass my life away sleeping.
Tsunetomo Yamamoto
I've never been afraid of being alone. For the sake of my work, I must be!
Ochiai Naoyuki
Math has proven the existence of God, because it is absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot prove it
Yōko Ogawa
Yuuko, speaking to Fai: To all the young ones in your group, you are no longer someone who passes through their lives and is forgotten. You have become someone very important to them. Your hardships are their hardships too.
CLAMP
Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.
Haruki Murakami
Well, the death of the body is the flight of the arrow. It's makin' a straight line for the brain. No dodgin' it not for anyone. People have't die, the body has't fall. Time is hurlin' that arrow forward. And yet, like I was sayin' thought goes on subdividin' that time for ever and ever. The paradox becomes real. The arrow never hits.In other words, immortality.
Haruki Murakami
There's a need, too, for a special name in order to distinguish between this present world and the former world in which the police carried old-fashioned revolvers. ... 1Q84 - that's what I'll call this new world. Q is for 'question mark'. A world that bears a question.
Haruki Murakami
he imagined fate as a goddess, capricious and fickle, or as a river, which could flood at any moment
Takashi Hiraide
People have separated from each other with walls of concrete that blocked the roads to connection and love. and Nature has been defeated in the name of development.
Yasunari Kawabata
Kazu, now that she thought of it, realized that for all her headstrong temperament, she had never loved a man younger than herself. A young man has such a surplus of spiritual and physical gifts that he is likely to be cocksure of himself, particularly when dealing with an older woman, and there is no telling how swelled up with self-importance he may become. Besides, Kazu felt a physical repugnance for youth. A woman is more keenly aware than a man of the shocking disharmony between a young man's spiritual and physical qualities, and Kazu had never met a young man who wore his youth well. She was moreover repelled by the sleekness of a young man's skin.
Yukio Mishima
In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature - or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organism. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.
Haruki Murakamiurakami
I feel the same way about all my friends. To me, the exact relationship between me and someone else doesn't matter much.But people want to label everything...so I guess I seem indifferent in that way.---Yasu
Ai Yazawa
Her only weapons were her tears.
Eiji Yoshikawa
Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.
Haruki Murakami
To learn the way of the Buddha is to learn about oneself. To learn about oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to be enlightened by everythingin the world. To be enlightened by everything in the world is to let fall one's own body and mind.
Dogen (1200-1253)
Those who are attached only to the result of their effort will not have any chance to appreciate it, because the result will never come.
Shunryu Suzuki
It is unfortunate for the gods that, unlike us, they cannot commit suicide.
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Ive told you before and my feelings haven't changed. I love you Sakura. Even if I cant match up to Natsume, my feelings would not lose to his. Even if we part ways and you forget about me, I will always think of you. Even if I grow old and leave this academy, I will definitely come see you. I'm here for you, until the day you look my way, I will always... I will always wait for you, together with Natsume. And this time around, I wont let Natsume steal you away again. Next time we meet, I will be more straight forward with my feelings, so that this time around, it wont be Natsume, but me you will choose, and me you will love. I wont lose, definitely." - Ruka
Tachibana Higuchi
Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.
Haruki Murakami
What alternative is there to the media’s “Us” versus “Them”? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this “righteous” position of “ours” all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the “dirty” distortions in “their” thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we’ll remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy.
Haruki Murakami
There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.
Haruki Murakami
Hearing a crow with no mouthCry in the deepDarkness of the night,I feel a longing forMy father before he was born.
Ikkyu
It's not like I'm all into nostalgia and history, it's just that I can't stand the way things are now
Novala Takemoto
The institution known as "school" isn't just a facility for doing classwork. It's essentially a microcosm of society, all of humanity put together in a little diorama. Bully exists in schools because war and conflict exist in the world, and school castes reflect our stratified, hierarchical society. Living in a democracy, the tyranny of the majority naturally applies at school, too. The majority -- that is to say, the people with the most friends -- are superior.
Wataru Watari
The determination to win is the better part of winning.
Daisaku Ikeda
Friends are a weird thing. It seems like they know all about you, but then they don’t understand you at all.
Natsuo Kirino
They say even death can't cure an idiot.-Ririn
Tite Kubo
First character, then ability.
Shinichi Suzuki
Haven't you ever heard of the saying, "If you want to shoot the general, first shoot the horse!"?' --LinIf you wanna shoot the general, then you should just SHOOT THE GENERAL!' --Ed
Hiromu Arakawa
I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.
Masanobu Fukuoka
The less worth of a man,the greater his pride.
Yukito Kishiro
The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)
Banana Yoshimoto
Don't blame me. That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution.
Haruki Murakami
A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance.
Haruki Murakami
Listen, everyone, you all have your own circumstances. Some of you come from rich families,and some poor. But your value isn't determined by such things--by things beyond your control. Each one of you must discover your own worth through your own efforts. So... don't make the mistake of thinking you alone are special.
Koushun Takami
Sometimes I just get tired. I get headaches, and I just lose track. I mean, it's like which is me and which is the role? Where's the line between me and my shadow?
Haruki Murakami
Robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves. It’s a crime."Fuka-Eri thought about that for a moment.Tengo went on, “Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves.
Haruki Murakami
The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.
Miyamoto Musashi
We all believe we can choose our own path from among the many alternatives. But perhaps it’s more accurate to say that we make the choice unconsciously. I think I did – but now I knew it because now I was able to put it into words. But I don’t mean this in the fatalistic sense; we’re constantly making choices. With the breaths we take every day, with the expression in our eyes, with the daily actions we do over and over, we decide as though by instinct. And so some of us will inevitably find ourselves rolling around in a puddle on some roof in a strange place with a takeout katsudon in the middle of winter, looking up at the night sky, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Banana Yoshimoto
Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Within two or three years of World War II's end, starvation had been basically eliminated in Japan, and yet the Japanese had continued slaving away as if their lives depend on it. Why? To create a more abundant life? If so, where was the abundance? Where were the luxurious living spaces? Eyesores dominated the scenery wherever you went, and people still crammed themselves into packed commuter trains each morning, submitting to conditions that would be fatal for any other mammal. Apparently what the Japanese wanted wasn't a better life, but more things.
Ryū Murakami
Would the mountain cherry blossoms return my affection for there is no one else out here. /もろともに あはれと思へ 山桜 花よりほかに 知る人もなし
Former Chief Abbot Gyoson
It is a wretched thing that the young men of today are so contriving and so proud of their material posessions. Men with contriving hearts are lacking in duty. Lacking in duty, they will have no self-respect.
Tsunetomo Yamamoto
I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.
Haruki Murakami
That's a good attitude. You should hate me more, curse me more, and detest me! Then you should take the power of that hatred and use it to survive this rotten world.
Hideaki Sorachi
Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at sea will compel him once again to dream of it, torment him with the absurdity of longing for something that he loathes.
Yukio Mishima
Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?""I guess it depends on how you die.
Haruki Murakami
I'm going to move on, while carrying these feelings with me.
Mika Yamamori
New Year’s cards from friends — colored patterns of my life
Mitsu Suzuki
Because the fact of not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride, I was never confronted by any impulse to express things and to make others understand something that I knew.
Yukio Mishima
Sheep hurt my father, and through my father, sheep have also hurt me.
Haruki Murakami
I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.
Takeshi Shudo
In other words, Shozaburo Takitani was now alone in the world. This was no great shock to him, however, nor did it make him feel particularly sad or miserable. He did, of course, experience some sense of absence, but he felt that, eventually, life had to turn out more or less like this. Everyone ended up alone sooner or later.
Haruki Murakami