Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 26

Life in this village is like that of a louse hanging on to a wrinkle in a loincloth.
Susumu Katsumata
I wish I could see a cherry blossom or a lotus flower. Where could they be?
Susumu Katsumata
For me, it was a lonely season. Whenever I got home and took off my clothes, I felt as if any second my bones would burst through my skin. Like some unknown force inside me had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and was leading me off in some strange direction to another world could go on like this forever, but would I ever find a place that was meant for me?
Haruki Murakami
We walked side by side to the station. The sweater kept me comfortable in the night air.“Okay, I’ll keep plugging away,” she said.“Wasn’t much help, was I?”“No, actually, it took a load off me just to be able to talk.”We caught trains going in opposite directions from the same platform.“You’re really not lonely?” she asked one last time. And while I was searching for a good reply, her train came.
Haruki Murakami
He's the only person who's entered my world apart from me.
Mika Yamamori
The memory of having sat at someone’s feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot. I’m trying to fend off your admiration for me, you see, in order to save myself from your future contempt. I prefer to put up with my present state of loneliness rather than suffer more loneliness later. We who are born into this age of freedom and independence and the self must undergo this loneliness. It’s the price we pay for these times of ours.
Sōseki Natsume
We've been very lonely, but we had it easy. Because death is so heavy - we, too young to know about it, couldn't handle it. After this you and I may end up seeing nothing but suffering, difficulty and ugliness, but if only you'll agree to it, I want for us to go on to more difficult places, happier places, what ever comes, together. I want you to make the decision after you're completely better, so take your time thinking about it. In the mean time, though, don't disappear on me.
Banana Yoshimoto
My loneliness was an important part of my own little universe, not some pathological disease that needs to be gotten [sic] rid of.
Banana Yoshimoto
I am a lonely man," he said again that evening. "And is it not possible that you are also a lonely person? But I am an older man, and I can live with my loneliness, quietly. You are young, and it must be difficult to accept your loneliness. You must sometimes want to fight it.""But I am not at all lonely.""Youth is the loneliest time of all. Otherwise, why should you come so often to my house?"Sensei continued: "But surely, when you are with me, you cannot rid yourself of your loneliness. I have not it in me to help you forget it. You will have to look elsewhere for the consolation you seek. And soon, you will find that you no longer want to visit me."As he said this, Sensei smiled sadly.
Sōseki Natsume
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
Don't you understand? Listen carefully to what I'm saying. If you do, you'll get it. you can grasp this easily. In short...in short, I shut myself in because I'm lonely. Because I don't want to face any more loneliness, I shut myself away.
Tatsuhiko Takimoto
I didn’t have the vaguest idea of what to do – I couldn’t keep staring at the wall forever, I told myself. But even that admonition didn’t work. A faculty advisor reviewing a graduation thesis would have had the perfect comment: you write well, you argue clearly, but you don’t have anything to say.
Haruki Murakami
From the photo albums, every single print of her had been peeled away. Shots of the both of us together had been cut, the parts with her neatly trimmed away, leaving my image behind. Photos of me alone or of mountains and rivers and deer and cats were left intact. Three albums rendered into a revised past. It was as if I'd been alone at birth, alone all my days, and would continue alone.
Haruki Murakami
There was something odd for him about not feeling lonely. The very fact that he had ceased to be lonely caused him to fear the possibility of becoming lonely again.
Haruki Murakami
Anyone who knows how scary it is to be alone, can't help loving others." ~Rin Sohma
Natsuki Takaya
Why were we so far apart, even when we were together? It was a nice loneliness, like the sensation of washing your face in cold water.
Banana Yoshimoto
Twilight whippoorwill...Whistle on, sweet deepenerOf dark loneliness
Bashō Matsuo
The two of them on top of the freezing slide, wordlessly holding hands. Once again they were a ten-year-old boy and girl. A lonely boy, and a lonely girl. A classroom, just after school let out, at the beginning of winter. They had neither the power nor the knowledge to know what they should offer to each other, what they should be seeking. They had never, ever, been truly loved, or truly loved someone else. They had never held anyone, never been held. They had not idea, either, where this action would take them. What they entered then was a doorless room. They couldn't get out, nor could anyone else come in. The two of them didn't know it at the time, but this was the only truly complete place in the entire world. Totally isolated, yet the one place not tainted with loneliness.
Haruki Murakami
I'm all alone, but I'm not lonely.
Haruki Murakami
Like you're riding a train at night across some vast plain, and youcatch a glimpse of a tiny light in a window of a farmhouse. In aninstant it's sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes. Butif you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, justbarely for a few moments.
Haruki Murakami
Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.
Haruki Murakami
The pain of being alone is completely out of this world, isn't it? I don't know why, but I understand your feelings so much, it actually hurts.
Masashi Kishimoto
Sometimes I feel so- I don’t know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you’re used to has been ripped away. Like there’s no more gravity, and I’m left to drift in outer space with no idea where I’m going’Like a little lost Sputnik?’I guess so.
Haruki Murakami
But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.
Haruki Murakami
Looking up at [the sky], I think about the October evening world, where 'people' must be going about their lives. Beneath that pale autumn light, they must be walking down streets, going to the store for things, preparing dinner, boarding trains for home. And they think--if they think at all--that these things are too obvious to think about, just as I used to do (or not do).
Haruki Murakami
I feel as if the world is listening for my next thought. But I can't think of anything. Sorry, but I just can't think of anything.
Haruki Murakami
it's a fine moon', she repeated
Haruki Murakami
There are all kinds of things we have to deal with in life,' Eri finally said. 'And one thing always seems to connect with another. You try to solve one problem, only to find that another one you hadn't anticipated arises instead. It's not that easy to get free of them. That's true for you - and for me, too.
Haruki Murakami
People think of all kinds of things at three in the morning. We all do. That's why we each have to figure out our own way of fighting it off.
Haruki Murakami
Osaka: Ah Get to ponderin' when Christmas rolls around. Y'all know Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer? That's messed up, y'know? Saying his nose will help light the way at night ain't no way t'make him feel better about it. If you told a bald fella you needed the light reflecting off his head to see, he'd like to punch you. Santa's a cruel bully.
Kiyohiko Azuma
I stayed in the town until early evening, and when the sun began to sink, my heart did too. This is your last chance to go back, I told myself. Once it gets completely dark, you might never be able to leave here. I went home on the same buses that had brought me there. I arrived before seven, and no one noticed that I had run away.
Haruki Murakami
I stayed in the town until earlyevening, and when the sun began to sink, my heart did too. This is your last chance to goback, I told myself. Once it gets completely dark, you might never be able to leave here. Iwent home on the same buses that had brought me there. I arrived before seven, and no onenoticed that I had run away.
Haruki Murakami
I am afraid to die, though,' I whispered to myself. These turned out to be my last words. They were not very impressive words, but it was too late to change them.
Haruki Murakami
Becoming the opponent means you should put yourself in an opponent's place and think from the opponent's point of view.
Miyamoto Musashi
The world follows its own course. Each possesses his own thoughts, each treads his own path. So it is with your mother, and so it is with your starling. As it is with everyone. The world follows its own course.
Haruki Murakami
No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. It’s like your shadow. It follows you everywhere. -Komura
Haruki Murakami
I felt as though I owned the whole world. And little wonder, because at no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny , as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it. This is what makes travel so utterly fruitless.
Yukio Mishima
Had I crossed the passSupported by a stick,I would have spared myselfThe fall from the horse.
Bashō Matsuo
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
It was a different sense of isolation from what he normally felt in Japan. And not such a bad feeling, he decided. Being alone in two senses of the word was maybe like a double negation of isolation. In other words, it made perfect sense for him, a foreigner, to feel isolated here. The thought calmed him. He was in exactly the right place.
Haruki Murakami
all I wanted was to go off to some other world, a place beyond anybody's reach. A place beyond the flow of time.
Haruki Murakami
There is one thing I can say for certain: the older a person gets, the lonelier he becomes. It's true for everyone. But maybe that isn't wrong. What I mean is, in a sense our lives are nothing more than a series of stages to help us get used to loneliness. That being the case, there's no reason to complain. And besides who would be complaint to anyway? (A Walk To Kobe, Granta 124: Travel)
Haruki Murakami
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
Bashō Matsuo
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
The journey itself is my home.
Bashō Matsuo
Everyone calls him BlockheadNo one sings his praisesOr takes him to heart...That is the kind of personI want to be
Kenji Miyazawa
When I was a nursemaid at the home of the landowners, a nun who happened to pass once gave me something square and white.Timidly I licked it and discovered that it was sweet and delicious. I realize now that it must have been a sugar cube;but still, more than twenty years later, I remember clearly the joy I felt then. It's not just children; everyone seems to be deeply touched by unexpected joy brought to them by others and is unable to forget it. That child will be grown up by now, and if he hasn't forgotten me, whenever he sees a crying child he'll want to say a kind word and wipe the kid's nose. And when that kid grows up, he'll do the same. To do something kind for another is never a bad feeling; it fosters a spirit of caring for other people. And who knows,after a hundrend years, human beings may even learn to cooperate with one another...Yes, that was it: I'd try to teach children that if they felt glad when someone gave them a single piece of candy,then they in turn should give to others.
Sayo Masuda
I know what the world is like. Nobody does anything unless there's something in it for themselves. But there are some people who do more than they have to for what they get in return, and those people are kind right to the heart.
Nahoko Uehashi
But still," Ayumi said, "it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.""You may be right," Aomame said, "But it's too late to trade it in for another one.
Haruki Murakami
My happiness comes from the kindness of those around me.
Natsuki Takaya
I have nothing to do with him,” L said. “To be completely accurate, I do not even know B. He is simply someone I am aware of. But none of this affects my judgment. Certainly, I was interested in this case, and began to investigate it because I knew who the killer was. But that did not alter the way I investigated it, or the manner in which my investigation proceeded. Naomi Misora, I cannot overlook evil. I cannot forgive it. It does not matter if I know the person who commits evil or not. I am only interested in justice.”“Only... in justice…” Misora gasped. “Then... nothing else matters?” “I wouldn’t say that, but it is not a priority.”“You won’t forgive any evil, no matter what the evil is?” “I wouldn’t say that, but it is not a priority.”“But...”Like a thirteen-year-old victim. “There are people who justice cannot save.” Like a thirteen-year old criminal. “And there are people who evil can save.”“There are. But even so,” L said, his tone not changing at all, as if gently admonishing Naomi Misora. “Justice has more power than anything else.”“Power? By power... you mean strength?”“No. I mean kindness.” He said it so easily.
NisiOisiN
We're all born with selfish desires, so we can all relate to those feelings in others. But kindness is something made individually by each person...so it's easy to misunderstand when others are trying to be kind to you.
Natsuki Takaya
The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. ... It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell.
Haruki Murakami
For a while, my self-control and my power of reason quailed to uselessness.
Kaoru Kurimoto
Everything in the world is actually connected. That means, even if we get separated, we'll never be alone
Shinobu Ohtaka
Oh this? It's a 'bookworm.'They live in books, and they love to eat important or valuable words.
CLAMP
His mind floated in the amniotic fluid of memory, listening for echoes of the past. His father, meanwhile, had no idea that such a vivid scene was burned into Tengo's brain or that, like a cow in the meadow, Tengo was endlessly regurgitating fragments of the scene to chew on, a cud from which he obtained essential nutrients. Father and son: each was locked in a deep, dark embrace with his secrets.
Haruki Murakami
It was clear that he didn't remember me from one day to the next. The note clipped to his sleeve simply informed him that it was not our first meeting, but it could not bring back the memory of the time we had spent together.
Yōko Ogawa
How oddly situated a man is apt to find himself at age thirty-eight! His youth belongs to the distant past. Yet the period of memory beginning with the end of youth and extending to the present has left him not a single vivid impression. And therefore he persists in feeling that nothing more than a fragile barrier separates him from his youth. He is forever hearing with the utmost clarity the sounds of this neighboring domain, but there is no way to penetrate the barrier.Honda felt that his youth had ended with the death of Kiyoaki Matsugae. At that moment something real within him, something that had burned with a vibrant brilliance, suddenly ceased to be.Now, late at night, when Honda grew weary of his legal drafts, he would pick up the dream journal that Kiyoaki had left him and turn over its pages.(...)Since then eighteen years had passed. The border between dream and memory had grown indistinct in Honda’s mind. Because the words contained in this journal, his only souvenir of his friend, had been traced there by Kiyoaki’s own hand, it had profound significance for Honda. These dreams, left like a handful of gold dust in a winnowing pan, were charged with wonder.As time went by, the dreams and the reality took on equal worth among Honda’s diverse memories. What had actually occurred was in the process of merging with what could have occurred. As reality rapidly gave way to dreams, the past seemed very much like the future.When he was young, there had been only one reality, and the future had seemed to stretch before him, swelling with immense possibilities. But as he grew older, reality seemed to take many forms, and it was the past that seemed refracted into innumerable possibilities. Since each of these was linked with its own reality, the line distinguishing dream and reality became all the more obscure. His memories were in constant flux, and had taken on the aspect of a dream.
Yukio Mishima
Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?
Haruki Murakami