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"I couldn't speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British, and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I'm regarded as one of their own in Japan."
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"I am not the river I am the net."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I can't help what I have any more than you can help what you don't."
Author Name
Personal Development
"You are a product of the stories you believe and accept."
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Personal Development
"I have a dark soul, that doesn't mean I don't love the sun, rainbows and things that emphasize the light."
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Personal Development
"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."
Author Name
Personal Development
"What's in a name? The accumulation of reputations from all who've owned it before you."
Author Name
Personal Development
"He lost his Self a thousand times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to it. Although Siddhartha fled from the Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable; the hour was inevitable when he would again find himself in sunshine or in moonlight, in shadow or in rain, and was again Self and Siddhartha, again felt the torment of the onerous life cycle."
Author Name
Personal Development
"We had as lief not be as not be ourselves."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The sooner you answer the question, "who am I" the more effective and successful life you will have."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I hadn't understood at the time. If sinners were so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why.Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my pastwas my life."
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Personal Development
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"There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one."
Life
"People aren't quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They're not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different."
People
"All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma."
Family
"When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence around a child, regulating it."
Management
"When I got to 40 or so... I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on, and many that I had no control over whatsoever."
Life
"I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff."
Fiction
"My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation."
Friendship
"The book was at a reasonably high position on the New York Times... before I was in the country. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if my presence here would push it up or down."
Thought
"Our family arrived in England in 1960. At that time I thought the war was ancient history. But if I think of 15 years ago from now, that's 1990, and that seems like yesterday to me."
Family
"I felt slightly superior to student politics, for instance. I had no reason to think this, but I thought of myself as slightly more seasoned. I became quite cynical talking to my student friends."
Friendship
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