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Quotes by Japanese Authors
"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."
"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"
"The ones with no imagination are always the quickest to justify themselves."
"Even my closest friend said I was finished, but I think I may be a little different from the others."
"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."
"Women have a role to play in global development."
"I had no idea how difficult Sondheim's music would be. All through the rehearsals, I kept flubbing. There were so many tempo changes. I could never get through the opening number without any mistakes. One day, I went up to Hal Prince and offered to leave the show. He laughed it off. He said, "Don't be silly. That's why we have tryouts.""
"Your success and significance in life is tied to the unleashing of the greatness in you."
"There's no sense forcing yourself if you don't feel like it. Tell you the truth, I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time."
"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."
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought."
"Almost a century has passed since Japan first entered the world community by concluding a treaty of amity with the United States of America in 1854."
"Women are all born with a special, independent organ that allows them to lie. This was Dr. Tokai's personal opinion. It depends on the person, he said about the kind of lies they tell, what situation they tell them in, and how the lies are told. But at a certain point in their lives, all women tell lies, and they lie about important things. They lie about unimportant things, too, but they also don't hesitate to lie about the most important things. And when they do, most women's expressions and voices don't change at all, since it's not them lysing, but this independent organ they're equipped with that's acting on its own. That's why - except for a few special cases - they can still have a clear conscience and never lose sleep over anything they say."
"The second is that the role of China trade in Japanese economy, important as it is, has often been exaggerated, as proven by our experience of the past 6 years."
"Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death."
"In such an environment, I was able to study things that could be of immediate usefulness to the world. That learning experience undoubtedly served me well when I eventually entered the work force."
"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."
"Even where friendship is concerned, it takes me a long time to trust people."
"Chemistry itself knows altogether too well that - given the real fear that the scarcity of global resources and energy might threaten the unity of mankind - chemistry is in a position to make a contribution towards securing a true peace on earth."
"Progress comes to those who train and train; reliance on secret techniques will get you nowhere."
"The purpose - where I start - is the idea of use. It is not recycling, it's reuse."
"I don't know of any other creature on earth other than man that will sit in a corner and cry because of some painful experience in the past."
"What i'm trying to say is this. A certain kind of shittiness, a certain kind of stagnation, a certain kind of darkness, goes on propogating itself by its own power in its own self-contained cycle. And once it passes a certain point, no one can stop it - even if the person himself wants to stop it."
"If telling men 'don't rape' instead of telling women 'don't get raped', is like telling thieves 'don't steal' instead of home owners to 'lock your houses', why don't we hear more victims of home invasion being told 'you got what you deserved for having such a beautiful house on display for everyone to see' ???"
"Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in part true."
"Liberty, freedom and democracy are very fuzzy words, but human rights is very specific."
"Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted."
"I had no choice in the decision to make myself available. I was not always doing things I wanted to do."
"I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world."
"From my debut until now, I've always wanted to sing and dance."
"And while he sat there on the end of the jetty, he'd let the sound of the waves fill his ears, watch the clouds and schools of tiny sweetfish, take pebbles he'd pocketed on the way and throw them out into the deep. Then when dusk began to settle he would retrace his steps, back to his own world. And on the way home, a loneliness would always claim his heart. He could never quite get a grip on what it was. It just seemed that whatever lay waiting "out there was all too vast, too overwhelming for him to possibly ever make a dent in."
"Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time."
"Contemporary literature in the West has shown some signs of ethical change."
"To succeed in this day and age, all you need to be ahead of the pack is to be informed, and turn the information into transformation for your betterment and that of others."
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