Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 3

It was the truth. I felt a yearning love for every instant that passed.
Banana Yoshimoto
A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born but you can choose how you die.
Haruki Murakami
The economy is after all driven by people. No matter how dire the situation may be, as long as people are firm, a turnaround, revival and progress can be possible.
Daisaku Ikeda
In my opinion, giving a kiss is a much better prize than receiving one.
Hiro Fujiwara
Explosive Pandemic-type zombies mostly spread the contagion through wounding or biting humans, and in that way, the increase their numbers. Because they multiply so quickly and explosively, they can destroy all human civilization in a very short time. For this reason, will refer to them as Explosive Pandemic-type zombies. The person responsible for Explosive Pandemic-type zombies is none other than George A Romero, who created them in 1968 Night of the Living Dead.
Freddy Sakazaki
The fact remains that a certain combination of fragrances can captivate the opposite sex like the scent of an animal in heat. One kind of fragrance might attract fifty out of a hundred people. And another scent will attract the other fifty. But there also are scents that only one or two people will find wildly exciting. And I have the ability, from far away, to sniff out those special scents. When I do, I want to go up to the girl who radiates this aura and say, Hey, I picked it up, you know. No one else gets it, but I do.
Haruki Murakami
I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something absolute. Just as some people have a secret love for rainstorms, earthquakes, or blackouts, I liked that certain undefinable something directed my way by members of the opposite sex. For want of a better word, call it magnetism. Like it or not, it’s a kind of power that snares people and reels them in.
Haruki Murakami
Psychologically speaking (I’ll only wheel out the amateur psychology just this once, so bear with me), encounters that call up strong physical disgust or revulsion are often in fact projections of our own faults and weaknesses.
Haruki Murakami
What alternative is there to the media’s “Us” versus “Them”? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this “righteous” position of “ours” all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the “dirty” distortions in “their” thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we’ll remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy.
Haruki Murakami
The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.
Kakuzō Okakura
I do not particularly like the word "work.” Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think this is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, and the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time.
Fukuoka
I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.
Haruki Murakami
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
We're on the same wavelength. We're connected that way, even if I'm away from her.
Haruki Murakami
I just got my signals crossed. First thing, I have to untangle the connections. Otherwise, I come away empty-handed. Or with someone else's hands. Or even with a missing hand.
Haruki Murakami
You don’t belong only to yourself, you know. I doubt there is a single person in this world that belongs only to himself. When someone makes a connection...there is always something shared. And so people will never be completely free. It’s that which brings out the fun...and sadness...and love.
CLAMP
People can't be just tied together. They have to connect. Otherwise, they'll find themselves bound hand and foot.
Ai Yazawa
Mr. Sagunuma: We can never escape who we are. Instead of wasting time worrying about it, why don't you cut to he chase and love yourself?
Bisco Hatori
Romantic EgoistNozomi: You've got an idea in your head... how you should act, but you can't act like, so you stifle yourself and don't even try.
Bisco Hatori
A person's last moments are an important thing. Yuou can't choose how you're born, but you can choose how you die.
Haruki Murakami
A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born, but you can choose how to die.
Haruki Murakami
Even from just a little thing, it's still possible to die.
CLAMP
Gaara: Can Sasuke come out to Die? Kakashi: Not Now.Gaara:.............Gaara: How 'bout now?
Masashi Kishimoto
It wasn’t that we started to look at things because there was now a mechanism by which to see them. There first had to be a will to see, buried somewhere inside living things. Without it, the mechanism would never have taken shape.
Kōji Suzuki
They say it'll be even hotter tomorrow. that's how we spend the summer. complaining about the heat.
Yōko Ogawa
Summer vacation is about watermelons, shaved ice, Popsicles, summer festivals with fireworks, and the ocean!!! That's what summer has been about for elementary school kids since the dawn of time! But no, you're worried about UV rays!""Oh my."-I don't think they had elementary school at the dawn of time-
Peach-Pit
From the girl who sat before me now...surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair. I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.
Haruki Murakami
Nothing goes perfectly for us. But... being incomplete is what pushes us onward to the next something... If we were even perfectly satisfied, what meaning would the rest of our lives hold, right?
Takehiko Inoue
Have you ever been on a roller coaster, Togawa-kun?You're only riding on it for a few minutes, right? If you spent the entire ride thinking "only so many seconds left... until this ride is over..." then what was the point of riding it in the first place?Nobody knows why we're alive. We don't have the time to bother.
Takehiko Inoue
Nice jewelry and a boys corpse. Oh you're so pretty.
Koushun Takami
Even though you're not by me side, Night, you will forever be my first man, my Zettai Kareshi
Yuu Watase
I still don't know what sort of world this is, she thought, But whatever world we're in now, I'm sure this is where I will stay. Where we will stay. This world must have its own threats, its own dangers, must be filled with its own type of riddles and contradictions. We may have to travel down many dark paths, leading who knows where. But that's okay. It's not a problem. I'll just have to accept it. I'm not going anywhere. Come what may, this is where we'll remain, in this world with one moon.
Haruki Murakami
Our life together's like a tale with a happy end, no matter what turns it took in the way.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Just by being with me, I feel like I have ruined a lot of things around you.
Mika Yamamori
Other people's minds aside, not even my own mind flows in the way that I wish.
Mika Yamamori
Before I can say anything, It dissolves in my throat And turns into tears.
Mika Yamamori
The weather is nice outside, but it's cloudy in my heart.
Mika Yamamori
His words back thenstill press down my throat with happiness and sorrow.
Mika Yamamori
The blades touched my abdomen. A cold shock ran through me, and my head began to spin. If he had pressed just a bit harder, the scissors might have pierced my soft belly. The skin would have peeled back, the fat beneath laid bare. Blood would have dripped on the bedspread.
Yōko Ogawa
To deceive oneself is worse than to deceive others." These harsh words pierced me to the core.
Shinichi Suzuki
Once a person has been poisoned by self-deception, he can't make decisions about himself as neatly as all that.
Kenzaburō Ōe
Although this may be a most difficult thing, if one will do it, it can be done. There is nothing that one should suppose cannot be done.
Tsunetomo Yamamoto
Throughout your life advance daily, becoming more skillful than yesterday, more skillful than today. This is never-ending.
Tsunetomo Yamamoto
One should every day think over and make an effort to implant in his mind the saying, "At that time is right now." It is said that it is strange indeed that anyone is able to pass through life by one means or another in negligence.
Tsunetomo Yamamoto
As a teacher, Tengo pounded into his students' heads how voraciously mathematics demanded logic. Here things that could not be proven had no meaning, but once you had succeeded in proving something, the world's riddles settled into the palm of your hand like a tender oyster.
Haruki Murakami
Of course, reading novels was just another form of escape. As soon as he closed their pages he had to come back to the real world. But at some point Tengo noticed that returning to reality from the world of a novel was not as devastating a blow as returning from the world of mathematics. Why should that have been? After much deep thought, he reached a conclusion. No matter how clear the relationships of things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution. That was how it differed from math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that suggestion in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and served no immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Someday he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within.
Haruki Murakami
Tengo's lectures took on uncommon warmth, and the students found themselves swept up in his eloquence. He taught them how to practically and effectively solve mathematical problems while simultaneously presenting a spectacular display of the romance concealed in the questions it posed. Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of several of his female students, and he realized that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds through mathematics. His eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions stroked their backs; theorems sent warm breath into their ears.
Haruki Murakami
I was impressed by the delicate weaving of the numbers. No matter how carefully you unraveled a thread, a single moment of inattention could leave you stranded, with no clue what to do next. In all his years of study, the Professor had managed to glimpse several pieces of the lace. I could only hope that some part of him remembered the exquisite pattern.
Yōko Ogawa
Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won't find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression - in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.
Yōko Ogawa
His ironing seemed highly rational, with a constant speed that allowed him to get the best results, with the least effort; all the economy and elegance of his mathematical proofs performed right there on the ironing board. The Professor was definitely the best man for this job, we had to admit, since the tablecloth was made of delicate lace.
Yōko Ogawa
...The pages and pages of complex, impenetrable calculations might have contained the secrets of the universe, copied out of God's notebook. In my imagination, I saw the creator of the universe sitting in some distant corner of the sky, weaving a pattern of delicate lace so fine that that even the faintest light would shine through it. The lace stretches out infinitely in every direction, billowing gently in the cosmic breeze. You want desperately to touch it, hold it up to the light, rub it against your cheek. And all we ask is to be able to re-create the pattern, weave it again with numbers, somehow, in our own language; to make the tiniest fragment our own, to bring it back to eart.
Yōko Ogawa
Solving a problem for which you know there’s an answer is like climbing a mountain with a guide, along a trail someone else has laid. In mathematics, the truth is somewhere out there in a place no one knows, beyond all the beaten paths. And it’s not always at the top of the mountain. It might be in a crack on the smoothest cliff or somewhere deep in the valley.
Yōko Ogawa
Three times now... We've fought world wars for our own nations, our own villages. We've hurt one another. We've hated one another. That hatred bred a lust for power, and that lust for power created ME. I was a Jinchuuriki, the embodiment of hatred and power. And I hated this world, and all the people in it... I wanted to destroy it with my own hands. The exact same thing Akatsuki is trying to do today. But one man, one ninja from Konoha stopped me. I was his enemy, yet he wept for me! I hurt him, yet he called me his friend! He saved me! My enemy, my fellow Jinchuuriki... He suffered the same pain as me, yet bore no ill will! There are no enemies here because we've all suffered at Akatsuki's hand! SO THERE IS NO SAND, NO STONE, NO LEAF, NO MIST, NO CLOUD! THERE ARE ONLY SHINOBI! And if you still hold a grudge against the Sand, then when this war is over, come and take my head instead! Our enemies are after the friend who saved my life! If they take him, if we hand him over, our world is finished! I want to protect him, and I want to protect our world! But I'm too young to protect it all on my own! All of you lend me your aid!
Masashi Kishimoto
I say we have no time for debate. Indeed, we have no need for it, since the decision has been made for us. We must fight. There is no other path!
Kaoru Kurimoto
The second whiskey is always my favorite. From the third on, it no longer has any taste. It's just something to pour into your stomach.
Haruki Murakami
Texting and phone calls, fireworks, blends, café au lait, and music. Yesterday's television. Work and beer. The neighbor's dog, or those strange flowers, the way it smells at Maisen. Those ordinary things I talk about with you. With you... I want to talk about love with you.
Tomoko Yamashita
What is a flower? A giant sexual organ in its Sunday best. The truth has been known for a long time, yet, over-aged adolescents that we are, we persist in speaking sentimental drives about the delicacy of flowers. We construct idiotic phrases like "So-and-so is in the flower of his youth", which is as absurd as saying "in the vagina of his youth".
Amélie Nothomb
In joy or sadness flowers are our constant friends.
Kakuzō Okakura
Happiness is a fortress.
Fuminori Nakamura
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