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Quotes by Japanese Authors
"If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity."
"The conclusion of things is the good. The good is, in other words, the conclusion at which all things arrive. Let's leave doubt for tomorrow," Komatsu said. "That is the point."
"But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me."
"Every person has their own colour."
"You should holistically build yourself to be the best you. The evidence of your glorious life should be an inspiration to many . You create your world yourself in your own positive way. You are stronger than ever and bolder than you think. Brave the odds and initiate new imprints for all to aspire and follow your footprints."
"I see stunning men walking on the street everyday. Some walk shirtless because it's hot and they feel more comfortable that way. Do I scream out at them, beep at them or whistle? No, I smile to myself in appreciation of them and drive on by. Why? Because I believe they have the right to go about their lives without me imposing my sexual desire upon them."
"Your "scared" and my "scared" are two different things.''What's that supposed to mean?' she asked.'As you get older, you don't recover from things so easy.''As you get older, you also get tired?''Yeah,' I said, 'you get tired."
"A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way."
"Stop comparing yourself with anybody. Compare yourself with yourself, for yourself and by yourself. We are uniquely pottered and purposed by our maker!"
"You are a success and nothing will stop your shining!"
"The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself."
"To be a highflier and a name to conjure with, you must decide your dimension, plan your path, master the moment, focus on the future, determine your degree, push your persistence and leadyour life."
"You're wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this." "I believe you," she whispers after a moment. "Please find my mind."
"For me- and for everybody else, probably- this is my first experience growing old, and the emotions I'm having, too, are all first-time feelings. If it were something I'd experienced before, then I'd be able to understand it more clearly, but this is the first time, so I can't. For now all I can do is put off making any detailed judgments and accept things as they are. Just like I accept the sky, the clouds, and the river. And there's also something kind of comical about it all, something you don't want to discard completely."
"Putting it into words will destroy any meaning."
"Make your problems becomeopportunities instead ofobstacles."
"If the attainment of peace is the ultimate objective of all statesmen, it is, at the same time, something very ordinary, closely tied to the daily life of each individual."
"Expression is a function of intention and intention emanates from your thought faculty."
"Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?"
"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."
"The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. ... It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell."
"It's not me but the world that's deranged."
"Certain kinds of information are like smoke: they work their way into people's eyes and minds whether sought out or not, and with no regard to personal preference."
"I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials."
"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."
"As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves."
"See people in the light of their potentials, not their problems."
"It was a different sense of isolation from what he normally felt in Japan. And not such a bad feeling, he decided. Being alone in two senses of the word was maybe like a double negation of isolation. In other words, it made perfect sense for him, a foreigner, to feel isolated here. The thought calmed him. He was in exactly the right place."
"The desire to see Okinawa returned to Japan developed into a broad national consensus among our people."
"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."
"There was much about him that was fine and beautiful, but he could never find the confidence he needed."
"Things change everyday. With each new dawn, it is not the same world as before. And you're not the same person you were either."
"I had several girlfriends, but nothing lasted. I'd date one for a few months, and then start thinking: This isn't what I want."
"Making excuses as to why you cannot do something based on what you don't have, or what hasn't happened yet, only serves to hold you back even further. WAIT FOR NOTHING & NO-ONE."
"We're on the border of this world, speaking a common language. That's all."
"Leadership is the ability to make things happen."
"We're on the same wavelength. We're connected that way, even if I'm away from her."
"I skipped the thirty-one years between 1938 and 1965 and jumped to the section entitled "Junitaki Today. Of course, the book's "today being 1970, it was hardly today's "today. Still, writing the history of one town obviously imposed the necessity of bringing it up to a "today. And even if such a today soon ceases to be today, no one can deny that it is in fact a today. For if a today ceased to be today, history could not exist as history."
"An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible."
"Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you're no longer talking about reality. You might think that --by following language and a logic that appears consistent-- you're able to exclude that aspect of reality, but it will always be lying in wait for you, ready to take its revenge."
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