Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 42

Democracy is a fine thing. But that doesn't mean citizens have a right to run riot whenever they disagree with something.#Page: 120
Kazuo Ishiguro
Just being with Nakajima made me feel as if we were detached from history, and had no particular age.
Banana Yoshimoto
If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn't, go for the one without form. That's my rule.
Haruki Murakami
When we fear what other people think about us, we are frequently more focused on 'being interesting' and less focused on 'taking an interest.' That's why many people talk a great deal when they are anxious and why many people never feel heard. If both people and conversation are trying to be interesting, there is no one left to genuinely listen.
John Yokoyama
You look down when you talk to a headstone! When you talk to a live person, you look up!I'm still alive! So treat me like it!Look at me!
Kazuya Minekura
All you have to do is wait. Sit tight and wait for the right moment. Not try to change anything by force, just watch the drift of things. Make an effort to cast a fair eye on everything. If you do that, you just naturally know what to do. But everyone's always too busy. They're too talented, their schedules are too full. They're too interested in themselves to think about what's fair.
Haruki Murakami
I want a baby of my very own one day, but it seems that my being male is a BIIIIT of a problem.
Yana Toboso
Eight or nine out of ten mothers in our society today believe that they have accomplished their duty if their daughters, once married, are not sent home in divorce. -Daughters in Boxes
Kishida Toshiko
Don't be so quick to throw away your life. No matter how disgraceful or embarrassing it may be, you need to keep struggling to find your way out until the very end.
Norihiro Yagi
I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.
Haruki Murakami
Every one of a hundred thousand cities around the world had its own special sunset and it was worth going there, just once, if only to see the sun go down.
Ryū Murakami
People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring.
Haruki Murakami
I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials.
Haruki Murakami
No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don't like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I can.
Haruki Murakami
Life is like a black hole. You don't know what lies ahead. You can't ever turn back. All you can do is move forward.
Hiroshi Yamamoto
Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.
Haruki Murakami
Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I'm talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean.
Haruki Murakami
Tobacco kills a lot of people, but cigarette vending machines are killing that woman by stealing her job.
Otsuichi
Let hunger sharpen your awareness. Abstain liquor and frivolous recreation, which dull the mind and weaken the body.
Laura Joh Rowland
A question wells up inside me, a question so big it blocks my throat and makes it hard to breathe. Somehow I swallow it back, finally choosing another. "Are memories such an important thing?""It depends," she replies, and closes her eyes. "In some cases, they're the most important thing there is.
Haruki Murakami
In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost.
Haruki Murakami
I’d rather trust and regret than doubt and regret. - Kirito
Reki Kawahara
Suicide" Kissshot said disappointedly .Her eyes were downcast , facing the town spread out below her ."A common reason , one accounting for nine-tenths of vampire deaths"."....."."Incidentally , the remaining tenth succumb to vampire slayers - any other reason fit within the margins of a rounding error"."Suicide ? Why ?"."Do they not speak of dying of boredom ?".Boredom was a killer .Guilt could kill you - but boredom was lethal .
NisiOisiN
The people of Hiroshima went to work at once to restore human society in the aftermath of the great atomic flood. They were concerned to salvage their own lives, but in the process they also salvaged the souls of the people who have brought the atomic bomb.
Kenzaburō Ōe
On the surface, humans appear to hate conflict, but in reality, they seek it.
Nagaru Tanigawa
By handling each sentimental item and deciding what to discard, you process your past. If you just stow these things away in a drawer or cardboard box, before you realise it, your past will become a weight that holds you back and keeps you from living in the here and now. Pg.116-117
Marie Kondō
People who lack confidence in their judgement lack confidence in themselves
Marie Kondō
Am I as admirable as that ant?
Nobuyuki Fukumoto
Science may explain how humans came into being, but it has no answer to the slippery question of how humans should live. Only literature makes it possible to pose such questions in the first place. And if there is no answer, only literature can point to the impossibility of ever finding one.
Minae Mizumura
In spite of my suffering, at the thought that I was sure to end up by killing myself, I cried aloud and burst into tears.
Osamu Dazai
We keep moving. And as we do, the things around us, well, they disappear.
Haruki Murakami
Anyone who knows how scary it is to be alone, can't help loving others." ~Rin Sohma
Natsuki Takaya
When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind.
Haruki Murakami
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But it was not until much later that I was able to get any real sleep. In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.
Haruki Murakami
It was a fine feeling indeed to be standing up there like that, with the sound of summer all around one and a light breeze on one's face. And I believe it was then, looking on that view, that I began for the first time to adopt a frame of mind appropriate for the journey before me. For it was then that I felt the first healthy flush of anticipation for the many interesting experiences I know these days ahead hold in store for me.
Kazuo Ishiguro
The greatest happiness of life was to stand at the difficult border between success and failure.
Eiji Yoshikawa
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
People make a great deal of the flowers of spring and the leaves of autumn, but for me a night like this, with a clear moon shining on snow, is the best -- and there is not a trace of color in it. I cannot describe the effect it has on me, weird and unearthly somehow. I do not understand people who find a winter evening forbidding.
Murasaki Shikibu
Pleasing things: finding a large number of tales that one has not read before. Or acquiring the second volume of a tale whose first volume one has enjoyed. But often it is a disappointment.
Sei Shōnagon
Honesty is to truth as prow is to stern. Honesty appears first and truth appears last. The interval between varies in direct proportion to the size of ship. With anything of size, truth takes a long time in coming. Sometimes it only manifests itself posthumously.
Haruki Murakami
A certain something, he felt, had managed to work its way in through a tiny opening and was trying to fill a blank space inside him. The void was not one that she had made. It had always been there inside him. She had merely managed to shine a special light on it.
Haruki Murakami
But thing in the past are like plate that’s shattered to pieces. You can never put it back together like it was, right?
Haruki Murakami
When you become big enough to wear this, they'll come for you. You'll probably be 17. It will be spring. Get on the ship. There, your ability will be needed. Then you'll be... free from solitude.
Shirō Yuiga
Well, if you live long enough, you lose a lot. Just as long as you don't throw them away. Whatever you loose, you'll find again, but what you throw away you never get back.-Oibore (Enishi's dad) to Yahiko and Misao
Nobuhiro Watsuki
I wasn’t able to be that person for you, and I did a terrible thing. I feel awful about it. But there was something wrong between us from the start, as if we’d done the buttons up wrong.
Haruki Murakami
At some point paradise would be lost.
Haruki Murakami
It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she were gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.
Haruki Murakami
A child isn’t born bitter. I point no fingers as to who tainted the clean, pure pool of my childhood. Let’s just say that when I realized that I didn’t want to grow up, the damage was already done. Knowing that being grown up was no swell place to be means that you are grown up enough to notice. And you can’t go back from there. You have to forge another route, draw your own map.
Hiromi Goto
To read Shakespeare is to feel encompassed -- the plays contain practically every word I know, practically every character type I have ever met, and practically every idea I have ever had.
Kenji Yoshino
If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.
Masaru Emoto
She gave me this look – she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around.
Haruki Murakami
Tamaki: Having the courage to be able to admit what you love... enjoying what you love... and being true to yourself... Isn't that also what it means to be strong?
Bisco Hatori
Language is very tough, though, a tenacity that is backed up by a long history. However it is treated, its autonomy cannot be lost or seriously damaged, even if that treatment is rather rough. It is the inherent right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of language in every way they can imagine—without that adventurous spirit, nothing new can ever be born.
Haruki Murakami
I go about saying how pained and tormented, how lonely and sad I feel, but what do I really mean by that? If I were to speak the truth, I would die.
Osamu Dazai
Reality is harsh. It can be cruel and ugly. Yet no matter how much we grieve over our environment and circumstances nothing will change. What is important is not to be defeated, to forge ahead bravely. If we do this, a path will open before us.
Daisaku Ikeda
And it seemed increasingly obvious that the world would have to topple if he was to attain the glory that was rightfully his. They were consubstantial: glory and the capsized world.
Yukio Mishima
I don't know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I'm pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.
Haruki Murakami
No need for everyone to look the same. The secret is to wear what suits you best!
Chica Umino
Somewhere Dōgen wrote about the number of moments in the snap of a finger. I don’t remember the exact figure, only that it was large and seemed quite arbitrary and absurd, but I imagine that when I am in the cockpit of my plane, aiming the nose at the hull of an American battleship, every single one will be clear and pure and discernible. At the moment of my death, I look forward at last to being fully aware and alive.
Ruth Ozeki
It was a stillness so profound one had to adjust one’s hearing to it.....The silence seemed to be trying to tell him something about itself.
Haruki Murakami