Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 24

Yes -- or rather, it's not so much that I want to die as that I'm tired of living.
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
All's well that ends well.''Assuming there's an end somewhere,' Aomame said.Tamaru formed some short creases near his mouth that were faintly reminiscent of a smile. 'There has to be an end somewhere. It's just that nothing's labeled "This is the end." Is the top rung of a ladder labeled "This is the last rung. Please don't step higher than this'?"Aomame shook her head.'It's the same thing,' Tamaru said.Aomame said, 'If you use common sense and keep your eyes open, it becomes clear enough where the end is.'Tamaru nodded. 'And even if it doesn't' -- he made a falling gesture with his finger -- 'the end is right there.
Haruki Murakami
Back then, living hadn't had any meaning. Every so often, without any warning or any real reason, he'd even caught himself thinking, 'Maybe I'll try dying.' He'd had one foot in the world of the dead, and yet the other foot had been chained to the world of the living, and he couldn't pull it out; he'd just looed on disinterestedly, sort of like it was all happening on the other side of some window, as the dull, vague world passed him by. Never making any more to walk out into it himself. Somewhere along the way, though, he'd stopped thinking about trying to die. He wondered when that had happened.
Yukako Kabei
You don't know what cold is until you've experienced the cold you feel when the blood is draining out of your body.
Ryū Murakami
When I arrived at the house in the suburbs that night I seriously contemplated suicide for the first time in my life. But as I thought about it, the idea became exceedingly tiresome, and I finally decided it would be a ludicrous business. I had an inherent dislike of admitting defeat. Moreover, I told myself, there's no need for me to take such decisive action myself, not when I'm surrounded by such a bountiful harvest of death—death in an air raid, death at one's post of duty, death in the military service, death on the battlefield, death from being run over, death from disease—surely my name has already been entered in the list for one of these: a criminal who has been sentenced to death does not commit suicide. No—no matter how I considered, the season was not auspicious for suicide. Instead I was waiting for something to do me the favor of killing me. And this, in the final analysis, is the same as to say that I was waiting for something to do me the favor of keeping me alive.
Yukio Mishima
It's not so easy for people to end their own lives. It's not like in the movies. There, they do it like nothing, no pain, and it's all over, they're dead. The reality is not like that. You lie in bed for ten years with the piss oozing out of you.
Haruki Murakami
Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgment on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men quite capable of tranquilly urging the Emperor to open a fruit shop.
Osamu Dazai
…Her desire was close to that of the person who drowns himself; he does not necessarily covet death so much as what comes after the drowning—something different from what he had before, at least a different world.
Yukio Mishima
Who hasn't wanted to die at one time or another?
Ryū Murakami
In fact, no form of death places a greater burden on society than suicide, for the act of suicide is the way a person seeks to resolve his alienation from a cooperative society.
Shinmon Aoki
Her words didn’t have the acrid smell of death.
Haruki Murakami
I see two lovers looking over the edge of the cauldron of hell. Are they contemplating a double suicide? This means their love will end in hell.' I couldn't stop laughing.
Banana Yoshimoto
Seriously... a sermon is not going to achieve anything. We all know perfectly well that one must not commit suicide. And yet there are times when the world we live in becomes so tough on us that we play with the thought. Therefore, it's useless to appeal to ethics; he ought to go with a more practical and concrete approach. If I were to stop suicide, I would do it like this: "Dying means falling into an eternal state of nothingness, a perfect void that can't be conceived by anything that is alive. Just think about it: your brain goes away. You do not have any thought anymore. Surely, you've heard of the phrase 'I think, thus I am,' no? Give it some careful thought. Nothing exists. Do you get this? Nothing exists. How many seconds could you endure being in a world without sound, without light, and without any kind of sensation? A world where you don't even get hungry. Where you have no desires at all. Can you follow me? But death is a perfect void, so it exceeds even such a sensation-less world. There is no future. Heaven is just a construct people who fear death made up. You should know why there will always be people who believe in a world after death despite the advent of science; it's because they are scared. Scared of what waits beyond death. So, don't think ending your own life will save you! It simply ends. It E-N-D-S. Suicide is the act of killing yourself, and dying without comprehending the meaning of death is but escaping from reality. Although the result is the same in both cases. All right, come on. Try to kill yourself if you can; try to kill yourself now that you've learned the truth."At the very least, I couldn't kill myself. After all, the only reason why I'm here now is because I'm more afraid of death than most.
Eiji Mikage
If the Emperor had not delivered his [15 August 1945] address urging the Japanese people to lay down their swords—if that speech had been a call instead for the Honorable Death of the Hundred Million—those people on that street in Sōshigaya probably would have done what they were told and died. And probably I would have done likewise. The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and self-sacrifice as the sensible course to take in life. We were accustomed to this teaching and had never thought to question it.
Akira Kurosawa
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
I'm going to live to be twenty-five,' she said, 'then die.
Haruki Murakami
How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal farther?
Ruth Ozeki
The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.
Yukio Mishima
I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prision. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key.
Haruki Murakami
My face, body, lifestyle, I chose every aspect of myself with my own will. I don´t want to be ordered around by anyone anymore, and I have no need for a past. I´ve got dreams to fulfill, money to earn, love to find and success do achieve. They may be foolishly simplistic desire for some, but to me, working towards them bit by bit is how I build my confidence.
Inio Asano
But they say that people who aren't confident in themselves tend to be more flashy
Kanae Hazuki
He was grand in his convictions. He would stride forward to meet his own destruction.
Sōseki Natsume
For a torture to be effective, the pain has to be spread out; it has to come at regular intervals, with no end in sight. The water falls , drop after drop after drop, like the second hand of a watch, carving up time. The shock of each individual drop is insignificant, but the sensation is impossible to ignore. At first, one might manage to think about other things, but after five hours, after ten hours, it becomes unendurable. The repeated stimulation excites the nerves to a point where they literally explode, and every sensation in the body is absorbed into that one spot on the forehead---indeed, you come to feel that you are nothing but a forehead, into which a fine needle is being forced millimeter by millimeter. You can’t sleep or even speak, hypnotized by a suffering that is greater than any mere pain. In general, the victim goes mad before a day has passed.
Yōko Ogawa
You know, with talented people....They draw people to themselves, and without even trying to, they tear them to shreds.
Kamoshida Hajime
suffering is a misunderstood pain
Haruki Murakami
Language is accurate: you run for your life. If you are dying, leave. If you are suffering, move. There is no other law, only movement.
Amélie Nothomb
I felt as though the vessel if my suffering had become empty, as if nothing could interest me now. I had lost even the ability to suffer.
Osamu Dazai
If something came out of the deal, it couldn’t make things any worse for us than they already were, I thought. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Hell has no true bottom.
Haruki Murakami
That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution
Haruki Murakami
No matter how much you hate or how much you suffer, you can't bring the dead back to life
Nobuhiro Watsuki
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
The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist ? It feels like it exists, but where is it ? And if it did exists, but doesn’t now, then where did it go ?
Ruth Ozeki
People don't exist without the past, I know. But the past isn't alive. It's you who's alive.
SHOOWA
My father used to say that when he was growing up the water was clear and there were tons of fireflies everywhere... He felt sorry for the kids growing up today... But it is really beautiful... Time will just keep on passing... we'll get old... and look back on the past. I hope we can always say... how great things were.
Fuyumi Soryo
Naturally—and why should I not admit this—I have occasionally wondered to myself how things might have turned out in the long run.... I only speculate this now because in the light of subsequent events, it could well be argued that in making my decision...I was perhaps not entirely aware of the full implications of what I was doing. Indeed, it might even be said that this small decision of mine constituted something of a key turning point; that that decision set things on an inevitable course towards what eventually happened. But then, I suppose, when with the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one's past for such 'turning points', one is apt to start seeing them everywhere.... What would have transpired, one may ask, had one responded slightly differently...? And perhaps—occurring as it did around the same time as these events?
Kazuo Ishiguro
No one can escape their past. The sins we've committed... and the sadness we've caused... No matter how far we run, our past remains, as ever-present as the moon in the sky. It looms in wait... for the day when we are forced to face it. But only in doing so can we truly make peace and move on in hope towards tomorrow.
Phoenix Wright
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
You can hide memories, suppress them, but you can’t erase the history that produced them
Haruki Murakami
It is not our memories but the person we have become because of those experiences that we should treasure. This is the lesson these keepsakes teach us when we sort them. The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.
Marie Kondō
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
It is not memories but the person we have become because of those past experiences that we should treasure. This is the lesson these keepsakes teach us when we sort them. The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not the person we were in the past. P.118
Marie Kondō
Sitting on the floor, I'd replay the past in my head. Funny, that's all I did, day after day after day for half a year, and I never tired of it. What I'd been through seemed so vast, with so many facets. Vast, but real, very real, which was why the experience persisted in towering before me, like a monument lit up at night. And the thing was, it was a monument to me.
Haruki Murakami
In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognise 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
All I trust is the past. Things that have ended can't betray me.
Novala Takemoto
I often laughed, and you often gave me a dissatisfied look, till you pressed me to unfold my past before you as if it were a roll of pictures. It was then I felt respect for you. Because you unreservedly showed me your resolution to catch something alive in my being, and to sip the warm blood running in my body, by cutting my heart. At that time, I was still living, and did not want to die. So I rejected your request, promising to satisfy you some day. Now I am going to destroy my heart myself, and pour my blood into your veins. I shall be happy if a new life can enter into your bosom, when my heart has stopped beating.
Sōseki Natsume
Stop looking at what everyone else has! You have to figure out who you are before you can be anyone!
Setona Mizushiro
You were scared they were going to laugh at you, right? So let them! People who discourage others will never find their own happiness!
Inio Asano
The first step toward being loved is learning to love what you see when you look in the mirror.
Tadahiko Nagao
You all have your own distinct personal backgrounds. Of course some of you come from rich families, some from poor families. But circumstances beyond your control like that shouldn’t determine who you are. You must all realize what you’re worth on your own.
Koushun Takami
Believe in yourself and the world will follow suit.
Tadahiko Nagao
I... There was a time when I stopped talking. Just like you. My reasons were a little bit different, but I think the feelings of being ashamed of myself and hating myself are the same. Here, it says to "like yourself." What does that mean? Good things- how are you supposed to find them? I only know things that I hate about myself. Because that's all I know, I hate myself. But even if you force yourself to find good things, it feels so empty. It doesn't work that way. People like your teacher just don't get it. I think when you hear someone say they like you, for the first time, then you can begin to like yourself. I think when someone accepts you, for the first time, you feel like you can forgive yourself a little. You can begin to face your fears with courage.
Natsuki Takaya
Putting it into words will destroy any meaning.
Haruki Murakami
Phonocentrism places higher value on spoken language as being more primary than and thus superior to written language, which it conceives as necessarily corrupting the original Subject—the center of meaning.
Minae Mizumura
Transported to a different culture, thought often loses its subtlety and can even rampage like a wild beast.
Minae Mizumura
... And that has remained an important mental landscape for me, a reference point. It teaches me something — or tries to. People need things like that to go on living — mental landscapes that have meaning for then, even if they can't explain them in words. Part of why we live is to come up with explanations for these things. That what I think.
Haruki Murakami
There is even rhythm in being empty.
Miyamoto Musashi
Once he gets to the fort the colonel turns to John Wayne and says, "I did see a few Indians on the way over here." And John Wayne, with this really cool look on his face, replies, 'Don't worry. If you were able to spot some Indians, that means there weren't any there.' I don't remember the actual lines, but it went something like that. Do you get what he means?
Haruki Murakami
I think of you as a friend. I used to think "friend" was just another word... Nothing more, nothing less. But when I met you, I realized what was important was the word's meaning.
Masashi Kishimoto
We sit to make life meaningful. The significance of our life is not experienced in striving to create some perfect thing. We must simply start with accepting ourselves. Sitting brings us back to actually who and where we are. This can be very painful. Self-acceptance is the hardest thing to do. If we can’t accept ourselves, we are living in ignorance, this darkest night. We may still be awake, but we don’t know where we are. We cannot see. The mind has no light. Practice is this candle in our very darkest room.
Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi
But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing?Who knows? Maybe that was 'despair.' What Turgenev called 'disillusionment.' Or Dostoyevsky, 'hell.' Or Somerset Maugham, 'reality.' Whatever the label, I figured it was me.
Haruki Murakami