Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 8

But thats their image of us so we stay tense, holding our breath, hoping we wont be found out. - about being gay from the film Love My Life
Ebine Yamaji
What we're fighting against isn't an out-and-out vice. It's an overgrown, perverted virtue.
Jared Taylor
Personally I am very pessimistic. But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can't help but bless them for a good future. Because I can't tell that child, 'Oh, you shouldn't have come into this life.' And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making.
Hayao Miyazaki
I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.
Haruki Murakami
Tisn't any need for you't'know. Even without you knowin', you function as yourself. That's your black box. In other words, we all carry around this great unexplored 'elephant graveyard' inside us. Outer space aside, this is truly humanity's last terra incognita
Haruki Murakami
People seem weak, but they're strong. They seem strong, but they're weak.
Fuyumi Soryo
I shouted into the phone, but there was no reply. Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke from the mouth of a gun.
Haruki Murakami
You know," she murmured, "we're all heading straight to hell.""Yes," said Masako, giving her a bleak look. "It's like riding downhill with no brakes.""You mean, there's no way to stop?" "No, you stop all right - when you crash.
Natsuo Kirino
STARS AND DANDELIONSDeep in the blue sky,like pebbles at the bottom of the sea,lie the stars unseen in daylightuntil night comes. You can't see them, but they are there. Unseen things are still there.The withered, seedless dandelionshidden in the cracks of the roof tilewait silently for spring,their strong roots unseen. You can't see them, but they are there. Unseen things are still there.
Misuzu Kaneko
When you want to make the main color pure and bright, don't just keep adding bright colors on it. Just make the colors around the spot darker and dull. It will give the scene dramatical effects.I think the life is the same.
Hiroko Sakai
She did not know it, but she was actually in despair at the poverty of human emotions. Was it not irrational that there was nothing to do except weep when ten people died, just as one wept for but a single person?
Yukio Mishima
Respect is earned.Honesty is appreciated.Trust is gained.Loyalty is returned.
Gackt
Life has a time limit. And we are changing all the time. So are our ambitions, desires, and purposes . . . The important thing is to find something that never changes in you.
Fumio Obata
That K was hesitant in love does not mean that his love was in any sense lukewarm. He was unable to move, despite the violence of his emotion. And since the impact of his new emotion was not so great as to allow him to forget himself, he was forced to look back and remind himself of what his past had meant. And in doing so he could not but continue along the path that he had so far followed.
Sōseki Natsume
If formality and courtesy take over the feelings . . . how silly and meaningless these things could become. And despite all this, I still take part in it!
Fumio Obata
I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.
Kazuo Ishiguro
To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is pleasure beyond compare.
Yoshida Kenkō
The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be.
Haruki Murakami
It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Do not despair at being an unsung hero. Always keep in your heart the desire to do what is right for mankind.
Maejima Hisoka
An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.
Yukio Mishima
The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school.
Haruki Murakami
It's not that I've suddenly become stronger or that something has changed. I'm still shaking. But... We don't have to let those fears stop us. What's most important is that we try to rise above our weakness.
Natsuki Takaya
Faster than the devil *times* Sharper than wind! That's the ultimate law of the hero!!
Masashi Kishimoto
People can only live fully by helping others to live. When you give life to friends you truly live. Cultures can only realize their further richness by honoring other traditions. And only by respecting natural life can humanity continue to exist.
Daisaku Ikeda
To distort our faces with joy, or wail and weep with sorrow, or collapse in agony, or wallow in sentimentality – wasn’t an inviolable human trait but something we can lose simply by leading dull and dreary lives. ‘A rich emotional life,’ she’d written, ‘is a privilege reserved only for the daring few’.
Ryū Murakami
Along the way I stopped into a coffee shop. All around me normal, everyday city types were going about their normal, everyday affairs. Lovers were whispering to each other, businessmen were poring over spread sheets, college kids were planning their next ski trip and discussing the new Police album. We could have been in any city in Japan. Transplant this coffee shop scene to Yokohama or Fukuoka and nothing would seem out of place. In spite of which -- or, rather, all the more because -- here I was, sitting in this coffee shop, drinking my coffee, feeling a desperate loneliness. I alone was the outsider. I had no place here. Of course, by the same token, I couldn't really say I belonged to Tokyo and its coffee shops. But I had never felt this loneliness there. I could drink my coffee, read my book, pass the time of day without any special thought, all because I was part of the regular scenery. Here I had no ties to anyone. Fact is, I'd come to reclaim myself.
Haruki Murakami
Rena: Come on. Who was that man?Keiichi: I-I don't know him!Rena: Liar. What were you talking about?Keiichi: S-S-Something that doesn't have anything to do with you!Rena: Oh...Ah-ha-ha. Oh. So it has nothing to do with us...Keiichi: Th-That's right...Rena: You're lying!!
Ryukishi07
The rules are simple!
Kazuki Takahashi
Each one of us has a fire in our heart for something.It is our goal in life to find it and to keep it lit
Gackt
They had laid the tender, down-ruffled little bird on a platter and appeared now to be pondering a way to eat out its heart without causing it distress.
Yukio Mishima
People have their own reasons for dying. It might look simple, but it never is. It's just like a rock. What's above ground is only a small part of it. But if you start pulling, it keeps coming and coming. The human mind dwells deep in darkness. Only the person himself knows the real reason, and maybe not even then.
Haruki Murakami
Everyone smiles, when they are with you. Please... from now on, go and help people in my place. Share your happiness with them.
YUI
It's easy to forget things you don't need anymore.
Haruki Murakami
Does writing exist for the typewriter, or the typewriter for writing? . . . the invention of the computer would one day make [the] argument obsolete . . . technologies exist for humans, and not vice versa.
Minae Mizumura
Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.
Kakuzō Okakura
People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies.
Haruki Murakami
If I do tell you the story, the two of us will always share it. And I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do. if I lift open the lid now, you’ll be implicated. Is that what you want? You really want to know something I’ve sacrificed so much trying to forget?
Haruki Murakami
Kyo: Of course, I'll beat YOU, too!Yuki: Don't you ever get tired of saying that?Kyo: Beating you is my vocation! It's my goal in life!Yuki: It's so unfair that I keep having to take abuse just because you can't meet your goals.Kyo: THAT CONDESCENDING ATTITUDE OF YOURS REALLY PISSES ME OFF!Yuki: And that revolting thought process of yours pisses me off.
Natsuki Takaya
I suppose that's the reason I believe that as long as there is someone in charge of the household, someone who can maintain order among its members, someone who is clearly mature and established as a person, someone, in other words, like my mother, then eventually all who live under the same roof, despite blood ties or lineage, will at one point become family. Such a simple idea, but one that took a while for me to catch on to.Oh, and another thing.If the same people don't spend enough time in a home, even if they are connected by blood, their bonds will slowly fade away like a familiar landscape.
Banana Yoshimoto
Utopia exists only in one's childhood life.
Hayao Miyazaki
We live in an age when it is cheaper to buy the rights to movies than to make them.
Hayao Miyazaki
We naturally try to forget our personal tragedies, serious or trifling, as soon as possible (even something as petty as being scorned or disdained by a stranger on a street corner). We try not to carry these things over to tomorrow. It is not strange, therefore, that the whole human race is trying to put Hiroshima, the extreme point of human tragedy, completely out of mind.
Kenzaburō Ōe
As I’ve said, it wasn’t until a long time afterwards—long after I’d left the Cottages—that I realized just how significant out little encounter in the churchyard had been. I was upset at the time, yes. But I didn’t believe it to be anything so different from other tiffs we’d had. It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven could unravel and separate over a thing like that.But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task. If we’d understood that back then—who knows?—maybe we’d have kept a tighter hold of one another.
Kazuo Ishiguro
You must liberate your mind of such dogmatic ideals, rid yourself of this unending illusion that stories have clear beginnings and endings. Stories never begin, nor do they end. They are comprised of people living an endless cycle of interacting, influencing each other, and parting ways. As long as stories are told they should not have clear endings.
Ryohgo Narita
The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless.
Hayao Miyazaki
Now that I think about it, this might all have been inevitable. The reason we all ended up here, the reason I couldn't leave her alone...it all had to be a ridiculous fairy tale.
Jun Mochizuki
A child's growth is defined entirely by the adult that raises him.
Naoki Urasawa
Might it have been nothing but life itself? Life; this limitless complex sea, filled with assorted flotsam, brimming with capricious, violent, and yet eternally transparent blues and greens.
Yukio Mishima
Y-naga: "That's the thing... It's like trying to find a guy who's a kid at heart but still a responsible adult, so he can be counted on when I find myself in a pinch, somebody who's a little wild at times but normally lets me have my way even when I'm being selfish and just says, "well, if you insist," a guy who's not too full of himself but understands what clothes suit his body type best..."S-hara: "What I'm saying is the pretty ones are stupid! The ones who have it all together are all so, so stubborn that they never do things my way!
Fumi Yoshinaga
In a world without fear of death... people will never attain the hope that is to be found from casting their fears aside and persevering through them. While it is true that people can continue to press forward through the simple act of living... That is in no way comparable to marching forward in the face of death while doing their damnedest to keep it at bay. That is why... that is why people have given that very march a unique and special name. Courage.
Tite Kubo
Gaara: Can Sasuke come out to Die? Kakashi: Not Now.Gaara:.............Gaara: How 'bout now?
Masashi Kishimoto
Necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals, or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That's what you call dramaturgy.
Haruki Murakami
Wherever I wander off to, when I draw, when I paint, I get my life back. I am lucky that I am an Artist.
Hiroko Sakai
It's true though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night," the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. "You can't fight it.
Haruki Murakami
Adjunct teachers are the professorial equivalent of the migrant Mexican farm laborers hired during harvest. If you can get a good contract at the same farm every year, where the farmer pays you on time and doesn't cheat or abuse you, then it's in your best interest to show up consistently from year to year.
Ruth Ozeki
Time waits for no one.
Yasutaka Tsutsui
When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. ‘Mythomania’ is the word for it.
Haruki Murakami
There is a simple way to become buddha: When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a buddha. Do not seek anything else.
Dōgen
Being alone is best. I mean, it's true, isn't it? In the end you'll be absolutely alone; therefore, being alone is natural. If you accept that, nothing bad can happen. That's why I shut myself away in my six-mat one-room apartment.
Tatsuhiko Takimoto