Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 5

People make a great deal of the flowers of spring and the leaves of autumn, but for me a night like this, with a clear moon shining on snow, is the best -- and there is not a trace of color in it. I cannot describe the effect it has on me, weird and unearthly somehow. I do not understand people who find a winter evening forbidding.
Murasaki Shikibu
I've been trying not to think about the things I wanted but couldn't have.I figured life must be about what you can't have.Some part of me has given up wanting anything. Why? I'm human, aren't I?Even though I knew that this was pointless.Why did I fall in love?
Kou Yoneda
You can’t feel lonely if there’s no one else around.-Yamaguchi Kenji (Yamaken)
Robico
And then it struck him what lay buried far down under the earth on which his feet were so firmly planted: the ominous rumbling of the deepest darkness, secret rivers that transported desire, slimy creatures writhing, the lair of earthquakes ready to transform whole cities into mounds of rubble. These, too, were helping to create the rhythm of the earth. He stopped dancing and, catching his breath, stared at the ground beneath his feet as though peering into a bottomless hole.
Haruki Murakami
Slowly like a movie fade out, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world.
Haruki Murakami
I was living for one thing only, and that was to confirm my own lack of feeling.
Haruki Murakami
In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and the stars is the distortion of space and time.
Michio Kaku
After that cancellation [of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas, after $2 billion had been spent on it], we physicists learned that we have to sing for our supper. ... The Cold War is over. You can't simply say “Russia!” to Congress, and they whip out their checkbook and say, “How much?” We have to tell the people why this atom-smasher is going to benefit their lives.
Michio Kaku
There are many people who say there's a God somewhere up there but, God is nothing more than a formula. Just a part of some law of physics that we have yet to understand.
Mohiro Kitoh
When the Russian delegate this summer indicated the Soviet Union's interest in sending medical equipment, Dr Shigeto went right away to see the delegate and settle the matter tactfully. He is careful to steer clear of the superficial swirl of political maneuvering, but never misses any opportunity to improve the capability of the A-bomb Hospital or to enhance concretely the welfare of the patients. In that sense, he sometimes refers to himself as a 'dirty handkerchief.' That is, he serves to filter political purposes out of relief efforts so that the effect on patients is purely and concretely humane.
Kenzaburō Ōe
What is this?! I couldn't die back when I would've been glad to die anywhere, anytime, but now that dying would take hardly any effort, suddenly I can't afford to yet? What the hell am I supposed to do?
Yukako Kabei
We definitely don't exist just for the sake of welcoming death someday; I believe we live for the sake of living on." —Kazuto Kirigaya "Kirito" (Sword Art Online)
Reki Kawahara
...and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust.Until that time, I had understood death as something entirely separate from and independent of life. The hand of death is bound to take us, I had felt, but until the day it reaches out for us, it leaves us alone. This had seemed to me the simple, logical truth. Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.
Haruki Murakami
All things that have form eventually decay." -Orochimaru
Masashi Kishimoto
If you're searching for the truth, throw out all your prejudices and just gather the facts. If you do that, you'll be able to see the real truth.
CLAMP
As I am both lazy and forgetful, I can't take proper care of too many things. That's why I want to cherish properly the things I love.
Marie Kondō
The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don't.
Marie Kondō
It was that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain element of danger
Haruki Murakami
Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth, I answered honestly. Sometimes, if I can't feel something like the warmth of a woman's skin, I get so lonely I can't stand it.
Haruki Murakami
I could never tell what was going on inside the pretty heads of the girls that Naoko brought along, and they probably couldn't understand me, either.
Haruki Murakami
No, we weren't lovers, but in a way we had opened ourselves to each other even more deeply than lovers do. The thought caused me a good deal of grief. What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for - and to do it so unconsciously.
Haruki Murakami
One thing became crystal clear to me when I couldn't see you anymore. I realized that the only way I had been able to survive until then was having you in my life. When I lost you, the pain and loneliness really got to me.
Haruki Murakami
I loved Midori. And I had probably known as much for a while. I had just been avoiding the conclusion for a very long time.
Haruki Murakami
I still loved Naoko. Bent and twisted as that love might be, I did love her. Somewhere inside me, there was still preserved a broad, open space, untouched, for Naoko and no one else.
Haruki Murakami
I have always loved Naoko, and I still loved her. But there is a decisive finality to what exists between Midori and me.
Haruki Murakami
But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have for happiness where you find it, and not worry too much about other people. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.
Haruki Murakami
I'd swallow some whiskey and listen to the waves while I thought about Naoko. It was too strange to think that she was dead and no longer part of this world. I couldn't absorb the truth of it. I couldn't believe it. I had heard the nails being driven into the lid of her coffin, but I still couldn't adjust to the fact that she had returned to nothingness.
Haruki Murakami
Waiting for your answer is one of the most painful things I have ever been through. At least let me know whether or not I hurt you
Haruki Murakami
No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow.
Haruki Murakami
I suddenly thought about my old girlfriend, the one I had first slept with in my third year of high school. Chills ran through me as I realized how badly I had treated her. I had hardly ever thought about her thoughts or feelings or the pain I had caused her. She was such a sweet and gentle thing, but at the time I had taken her sweetness for granted and later hardly gave her a second thought. What was she doing now? I wondered. And had she forgiven me?
Haruki Murakami
I thought about Kizuki. "So you finally made Naoko yours," I heard myself telling him. Oh, well, she was yours to begin with. Now maybe, she's where she belongs. But in this world, in this imperfect world of the living, I did the best I could for Naoko.
Haruki Murakami
I straightened up and looked out the plane window at the dark clouds hanging over the North Sea, thinking of what I had lost in the course of my life: times gone forever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again.
Haruki Murakami
I know, too, why she asked me not to forget her. Naoko herself knew, of course. She knew that my memories of her would fade. Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget her, to remember that she had existed. The thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow. Because Naoko never loved me.
Haruki Murakami
Once upon a time, you dragged a part of me into the world of the dead, and now Naoko has dragged another pat of me into that world.
Haruki Murakami
Everything seems pointless since you left
Haruki Murakami
Too many memories of her were crammed inside of me, and as soon as one of them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in an endless stream, an unstoppable flood.
Haruki Murakami
I think of you now mare than ever. It's raining today.
Haruki Murakami
Not everybody is looking for a boyfriend with a sports car.
Haruki Murakami
I look around me sometimes and I get sick to my stomach. Why the hell don't these bastards do something? I wonder. They don't do a damn thing, and then they bitch.
Haruki Murakami
I had thought about it so often - too often, to the point where it had distorted my sense of time.
Haruki Murakami
Here I was, seeing you almost every week, and talking with you, and knowing that the only one in your heart was Kizuki. It hurt. It really hurt. And I think that's why I slept with girls I didn't know.
Haruki Murakami
You want to know why you felt that way about me even though you didn't love me.
Haruki Murakami
There was much about him that was fine and beautiful, but he could never find the confidence he needed.
Haruki Murakami
I went on loving him just the same, and I could never be interested in anyone else.
Haruki Murakami
No, it's not sick. I wish I could be the one to hold you, though, I said. So hold me. Now. Right here.
Haruki Murakami
I miss you something awful sometimes
Haruki Murakami
It's hard not being able to see you, but my life in Tokyo would be a lot worse if it weren't for you.
Haruki Murakami
If you think about it, an unfair society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit.
Haruki Murakami
Maybe so, but I'm not just looking up at the sky and waiting for the fruit to drop. In my own way, I'm working hard. I'm working ten times harder than you are.
Haruki Murakami
In any case, though, I believe that I have not been fair to you and that, as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply.
Haruki Murakami
I have a million things to talk to you about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.
Haruki Murakami
They dig holes from time to time,' the Colonel explains. 'It is probably for them what chess is for me. It has no special meaning, does not transport them anywhere. All of us dig at our own pure holes. We have nothing to achieve by our activities, nowhere to get to. Is there not something marvelous about this? We hurt no one and no one gets hurt. No victory, no defeat.
Haruki Murakami
It's no good to want to win still more when you have already won.
Eiji Yoshikawa
God against man. Man against God. Man against nature. Nature against man. Nature against God. God against nature. Very funny religion!
D.T. Suzuki
Loving her, and being loved, was the only way I could hold myself together.
Haruki Murakami
And I really wanted to see you, too," she said. "When I couldn’t see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really need you. You’re a part of me; I’m a part of you.
Haruki Murakami
Japanese people today think of money, just money: Where is our national spirit today? The Jieitai must be the soul of Japan. … The nation has no spiritual foundation. That is why you don’t agree with me. You will just be American mercenaries. There you are in your tiny world. You do nothing for Japan. … I salute the Emperor. Long live the emperor!
Yukio Mishima
Beyond doubt it would speedily verify the proverb that a nation must ravage itself before foreigners can ravage it, a man must despise himself before others can despise him.
Yukio Mishima
Even if you succeed in study and business, if your nation collapses, then what good is it for?
Itō Hirobumi
It's just that the chaos has changed shape. The giraffe and the bear have traded hats, and the bear's switched scarves with the zebra.
Haruki Murakami