Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 16

I only need 1 thing: Everything" - Sengoku Nadeko
NisiOisiN
If I choose to write about sheep, it's just because I happened to write about sheep. There is no deep significance.
Haruki Murakami
The world is always full of the sound of waves.The little fishes, abandoning themselves to the waves, dance and sing, and play, but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it depth?
Eiji Yoshikawa
The world is a huge space, but the space that will take you in - and itdoesn't have to be very big - is nowhere to be found. You seek a voice, but what doyou get? Silence. You look for silence, but guess what? All you hear over and overand over is the voice of this omen. And sometimes this prophetic voice pushes asecret switch hidden deep inside your brain.
Haruki Murakami
this is very important, so listen carefully. As I told you before, there is no middle ground with me. You take either all of me or nothing. That’s the way it works. If you don’t mind continuing the way we are now, I don’t see why we can’t do that. I don’t know how long we’d be able to, but I’ll do everything in my power to see that it happens. When I’m able to come see you, I will. But when I can’t, I can’t. I can’t just come to see you whenever I feel like it. You may not be satisfied with that arrangement, but if you don’t want me to go away again, you have to take all of me. Everything. All the baggage I carry, everything that clings to me. And I will take all of you. Do you understand that? Do you understand what that means?
Haruki Murakami
waging war against inane language that circulates almost automatically is a writer's eternal mission, and the day will never come when this battles are unnecessary.
Minae Mizumura
Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement.Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura’s version of political theory.
Yukio Mishima
If I simply do my best, I cannot complain even if I am taken to hell.
Shinichi Suzuki
For me- and for everybody else, probably- this is my first experience growing old, and the emotions I'm having, too, are all first-time feelings. If it were something I'd experienced before, then I'd be able to understand it more clearly, but this is the first time, so I can't. For now all I can do is put off making any detailed judgments and accept things as they are. Just like I accept the sky, the clouds, and the river. And there's also something kind of comical about it all, something you don't want to discard completely.
Haruki Murakami
Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.
Haruki Murakami
There will always be people who will accept you for what you are!
Sakura Tsukuba
Because he had been- and in many ways still was- such a brilliant man, he no doubt understood the nature of his memory problem. It wasn't pride that prevented him from asking for help but a deep aversion to causing more trouble than necessary for those of us who lived in the normal world.
Yōko Ogawa
It's interesting how pain can change a person, eh? How it makes a man abandon his pride and forsake himself.
Kichiku Neko
If you want to protect your pride, you don't need people to like you!
Wataru Watari
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
I'll tell you a secret about storytelling. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty... were not perfect in the beginning. It's only a happy ending on the last page, right? If the princess had everything from the beginning, there wouldn't be a story. Anyone who is imperfect or incomplete can become the main character in the story.
Peach-Pit
The important thing in our understanding is to have a smooth, free-thinking way of observation. We have to think and to observe things without stagnation. We should accept things as they are without difficulty. Ou mind should be soft and open enough to understand things as they are. When our thinking is soft, it is called imperturbable thinking. This kind of thinking is always stable. It is called mindfulness.
Shunryu Suzuki
It's lonely to say goodbye. Very lonely. Partings are the beginnings of new meetings. Beginnings happen because there are endings…Meetings. Beginnings. It's not too late…to believe in them after the fact.
Natsuki Takaya
I am strong... Extra-ordinarily so much more than you guys! Therefore, I am perfectly capable of kicking those titan scumbags' collective ass including on my own if I have to. Are you all such a bunch incompetents? You gutless spineless cowards. You just stay there and watch in helpless envy. Yeah, you do that. If it is (impossible), then I'll die... It's just that simple. But if I win, I get to live. You don't stand a single chance to win unless you fight.
Hajime Isayama
Have strength in yourself always .think and remember not just what you should do, but also what you want to do. (Ageha , Basara, Vol. 13)
Yumi Tamura
This time, Fusako was able to express herself with fluency and candor. The bold letters she had been writing week after week had granted her an unexpected new freedom.
Yukio Mishima
Look in the mirror. What you see there is what you get from others. When you smile, smile comes back to you. When you get angry, anger comes back to you. When you love, love comes back to you, when you hate, hatred comes back to you.That's very simple. You can make your life however you like by how you behave.
Hiroko Sakai
What makes somebody nice or unpleasant to be around is the way they communicate. When people are fucked up, their communication is fucked up.
Ryū Murakami
Ships passing in broad daylight.
Haruki Murakami
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
Like boarding a train running parallel. That's what disappearing is.
Haruki Murakami
...no matter how advanced the system, no matter how precise, unless we have the will to communicate, there's no connection. And even supposing the will is there, there are times like now when we don't know the other party's number. Or even if we know the number, we misdial.
Haruki Murakami
So without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself, to express yourself freely as you are is the most important thing to make yourself happy, and to make others happy... So we should be concentrated with our full mind and body on what we do; and we should be faithful, subjectively and objectively, to ourselves, and especially to our feelings... it is better to express how you feel without any particular attachment or intention.
Shunryu Suzuki
When we say something, our subjective intention or situation is always involved. So there is no perfect word; some distortion is always present in a statement.
Shunryu Suzuki
We emphasize straightforwardness. You should be true to your feelings, and to your mind, expressing yourself without any reservations. This helps the listener to understand more easily.
Shunryu Suzuki
When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is. We put very little emphasis on right and wrong or good and bad. We just see things as they are with him, and accept them. This is how we communicate with each other. Usually when you listen to some statement, you hear it as a kind of echo of yourself. You are actually listening to your own opinion. If it agrees with your opinion you may accept it, but if it does not, you will reject it or you may not even really hear it.
Shunryu Suzuki
True communication depends upon our being straightforward with one another... But the best way to communicate may be just to sit without saying anything.
Shunryu Suzuki
A mind full of preconceived ideas, subjective intentions, or habits it not open to things as they are.
Shunryu Suzuki
Civilization is communication. When that which should be expressed and transmitted is lost, civilization comes to an end.
Haruki Murakami
To wit, existence is communication and communication is existence.
Haruki Murakami
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
Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another.
Haruki Murakami
In your big mind, everything has the same value...In your practice you should accept everything as it is, giving to each thing the same respect given to a Buddha. Here there is Buddhahood
Shunryu Suzuki
Don't fret, boy. I'm not so foolish as to ridicule the myths and legends of other people. For countless generations, people, no matter where they're from, have been trying to understand this world of ours.
Nahoko Uehashi
The human heart is like the reflection on the water's surface. The mouth says things opposite to what the heart really feels.
Masashi Kishimoto Naruto Shippuden
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
What do you think dignity's all about?'The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public.
Kazuo Ishiguro
You got a choice, dude. We've all got choices. Lots of them. Every single second of the day we're making choices. You've just been making bad ones, is all.
Ruth Ozeki
In the past, humans hesitated when they took lives, even non-human lives. But society had changed, and they no longer felt that way. As humans grew stronger, I think that we became quite arrogant, losing the sorrow of 'we have no other choice.' I think that in the essence of human civilization, we have the desire to become rich without limit, by taking the lives of other creatures.
Hayao Miyazaki
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
In the morning After taking cold shower —-what a mistake—- I look at the mirror.There, a funny guy, Grey hair, white beard, wrinkled skin, —-what a pity—- Poor, dirty, old man, He is not me, absolutely not.Land and life Fishing in the ocean Sleeping in the desert with stars Building a shelter in the mountains Farming the ancient way Singing with coyotes Singing against nuclear war— I’ll never be tired of life. Now I’m seventeen years old, Very charming young man.I sit quietly in lotus position, Meditating, meditating for nothing. Suddenly a voice comes to me: “To stay young, To save the world, Break the mirror.
Nanao Sakaki
I felt so stupid and young, and at the same time something was cracking open inside me, or maybe it was the world was cracking open to show me something really important underneath. I knew I was only seeing a tiny bit of it, but it was bigger than anything I'd ever seen or felt before.
Ruth Ozeki
Anyway, I forgot all about him once I graduated. So quickly and easily, it was weird. What was it about him that had made the seventeen-year-old me fall so hard? Try as I might, I couldn’t remember. Life is strange, isn’t it? You can be totally entranced by something one minute, be willing to sacrifice everything to make it yours, but then a little time passes, or your perspective changes a bit, and all of a sudden you’re shocked at how its glow has faded. What was I looking at? you wonder. So that’s the story of my ‘breaking-and-entering’ period.
Haruki Murakami
when we were eleven, say, we really weren't interested in each other's poems at all. . . . But we didn't know a thing about poetry. We didn't care about it.
Kazuo Ishiguro
What the hell? Die in a fire, youth. Die in a fire.
Wataru Watari
Hey, you know that thing Dostoyevesky wrote on gambling? It's like that. When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up.
Haruki Murakami
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
We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy.
Haruki Murakami
From a human point of view, out bodily existence is a fairytale. At any rate, to the inhabitants of the human world, 'heaven' and 'the next world' are both nothing but fables.
CLAMP
Why does that kid think so highly of himself?""Kids that think they're so smart.They're everywhere! Destroy is self-esteem!""Yes...I really do think highly of myself.People like me should get a taste of the ups and downs of life! Sorry I'm so envious.I will reflect upon this. Please don't be angry."Ah..um..""There, I said it now. Are you satisfied?" ........"Bye
Natsuki Takaya
To give means to think, every single day, about what you can do to make people happy.
Ryuho Okawa
Nana...how come being happy and making your dreams come true are two different things? Even now, I still don't know why...
Ai Yazawa
One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.
Dōgen
Certain kinds of information are like smoke: they work their way into people's eyes and minds whether sought out or not, and with no regard to personal preference.
Haruki Murakami
Awakened at midnightby the sound of the water jarcracking from the ice
Bashō Matsuo