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Quotes by Japanese Authors
"I like America anyway. In Japan we are much more formal. If two friends are separated for a long time and they meet they bow and bow and bow. They keep bowing without exchanging a word. Here they slap each other on the back and say: Hello, old man, how goes everything."
"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."
"However, even during the preparations for action, we laid our plans in such a manner that should there be progress through diplomatic negotiation, we would be well prepared to cancel operations at the latest moment that communication technology would have permitted."
"In the beginning, I didn't dance that much and stuff."
"I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large."
"My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity."
"Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death."
"The way I work, typically, I do everything at the very last minute. Even if I was given two months, I'd do it in the last three days."
"People's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is guess from what comes floating to the surface every once in a while."
"I think I can make an entirely new game experience, and if I can't do it, some other game designer will."
"Mars is really different, into art. Lydia Lunch is more energy. James Chance is more commercial in a different way, in funk and jazz. They were all doing original things, trying to create their own sound and music. I think they're all great."
"The proverbial philosophy of a people helps us to understand more about them than any other kind of literature."
"All I know is I'm totallyalone. All alone i n an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don't know, and I give up thinking about it."
"After I got married, the first child born to us was mentally handicapped."
"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."
"Liberty, freedom and democracy are very fuzzy words, but human rights is very specific."
"To lead and live the life of your dream, you must arise and be in-charge of the authorship of your own destiny."
"That's the most important thing for a sickness like ours: a sense of trust. If I put myself in this person's hands, I'll be OK. If my condition starts to worsen even the slightest bit - if a screw comes loose - he'll notice straight away, and with tremendous care and patience he'll fix it, he'll tighten the screw again, put all the jumped threads back in place. If we have that sense of trust, our sickness stays away."
"In particular, for younger researchers on whom the future of mankind may depend. We believe that they are working with all the scientific wisdom at their disposal for the preservation of the inheritance of the earth and for the lasting survival of mankind."
"There is only one you on the globe today. You have been built to inspire and designed to dazzle. Live your uniqueness!"
"I could go on like this forever, but would I ever find a place that was meant for me? Like, for example, where? After lengthy considerations, the only place I could think of was the cockpit of a two-seater Kamikaze torpedo-plane. Of all the dumb ideas. In the first place, all the torpedo-planes were scrapped thirty years ago."
"It's hard to decide how to match words to music. It's not like it's twice the work. It's always difficult for me to explain to the composer what I'm looking for. I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music."
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought."
"In English, the sounds and melodies I created were an inspiration to me, and words came to me as I explored the sounds, and from there I was able expand on the meaning."
"People do ask me if I think I can make it in the States."
"For me, it's an experiment to see what people are gonna think of it."
"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."
"Of course we've been fighting against stereotypes from Day One at East West. That's the reason we formed: to combat that, and to show we are capable of more than just fulfilling the stereotypes - waiter, laundryman, gardener, martial artist, villain."
"There was a very convincing argument made that the extremists have won and the aggression is now supported by the majority, therefore fighting until surrender was the only alternative."
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