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Quotes by Japanese Authors
"Aren't you afraid of dying?Not really. I've watched lots of good-for-nothing, worthless people die, and if people like that can do it, then I should be able to handle it."
"The idea of a Japanese comedian was not only a rarity, it was non-existent."
"O.K., so I'm not so smart. I'm working class. But it's the working class that keeps the world running, and it's the working class that gets exploited. What the hell kind of revolution have you got just tossing out big words that working-class people can't understand? What the hell kind of social revolution is that? I mean, I'd like to make the world a better place, too. If somebody's really being exploited, we've got to put a stop to it. That's what I believe, and that's why I ask questions."
"It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine."
"It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she was gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling."
"Artists are those who can evade the verbose."
"If something came out of the deal, it couldn't make things any worse for us than they already were, I thought. But I couldn't have been more wrong. Hell has no true bottom."
"I'm still not sure I made the right choice when I told my wife about the bakery attack.But then,it might not have been a question of right or wrong. Which is to say that wrong choices can produce right results, and vice versa. I myself have adopted the position that,in fact, we never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not."
"I need to learn not just to forget but to forgive."
"It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality."
"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."
"Somewhere between 'not enough' and 'not at all.' I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once."
"In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places."
"Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything."
"There's not a branch of publishing or broadcasting that doesn't depend in some way on advertising. It'd be like an aquarium without water. Why, ninety-five percent of the information that reaches you has already been preselected and paid for."
"For some reason, I grew up generally believing that Japan and Korea were quite friendly. I do know that there is some bad history and the extremists on both sides are unreasonable."
"In the beginning, I didn't dance that much and stuff."
"It occurred to me what a simple thing reality is, how easy it is to make it work. It's just reality. Just housework. Just a home. Like running a simple machine. Once you learn to run it, it's just a matter of repetition. You push this button and pull that lever. You adjust a gauge, put on the lid, set the timer. The same thing, over and over."
"There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair."
"There's a need, too, for a special name in order to distinguish between this present world and the former world in which the police carried old-fashioned revolvers. ... 1Q84 - that's what I'll call this new world. Q is for 'question mark'. A world that bears a question."
"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."
"Food fighters in Japan think of themselves as athletes. They have a higher recognition of the game and are constantly thinking about records. I probably won't continue for long because it puts pressure on the body. But I am at the age where I can perform my best."
"If you are not happy here and now, you never will be."
"It is only natural that for any statesman at the helm of any government the question of his country's security should be a concern of the utmost importance."
"All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free?"
"Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep."
"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."
"I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can't really understand what it means. All I know is I'm totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free?"
"QuizA¡s aun no te comprenda. Pero, con un poco de tiempo, llegarA© a entenderte. Y no habrA¡ nadie en el mundo que te comprenda mejor que yo."
"I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials."
"When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind."
"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."
"The unity of Nigeria will only come if we overcome and overgrow tribe, materialism and selfish human nature."
"The desire to see Okinawa returned to Japan developed into a broad national consensus among our people."
"In ancient times people weren't just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everybody in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing other half."
"Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart."
"I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all."
"It wasn't like there was some obvious change. Actually, the problem was more a lack of change. Nothing about her had changed - the way she spoke, her clothes, the topics she chose to talk about, her opinions - they were all the same as before. Their relationship was like a pendulum gradually grinding to a halt, and he felt out of synch."
"In truly deep darkness, all kinds of strange things were possible."
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