top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Japanese Authors
"I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life."
"I don't think it's right that I'm part of the problem. I can't be part of the solution if I'm part of the problem."
"Stop hating yourself for the things you have not and start loving yourself for the things that you have."
"You were not just blessed for yourself,your were blessed to be a blessing toothers."
"Count your blessings."
"God's ultimate purpose for creating you is not for you to go to heaven. If the purpose for your creation was just for you to go to heaven, you will die immediately you got born-again. God's ultimate purpose for creating you is for you to influence and impact generations positively to the glory of His name."
"The whiff of ocean on the southern breeze and the smell of burning asphalt brought back memories of summers past. It had seemed as though those sweet dreams of summer would last forever: the warmth of a girl's skin, an old rock 'n' roll song, freshly washed button-down shirt, the odor of cigarette smoke in a pool changing room, a fleeting premonition. Then one summer (when had it been?) the dreams had vanished, never to return."
"In you is the ability that will move you from nonentity and mediocrity to an entity of meteority. Take responsiblity now!"
"To what extent facts we recognize as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the maintenance of this chain which produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist. But something can happen to sever that chain and we are at a loss. What is real? Is reality on this side of the break in the chain? Or over there, on the other side?"
"Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on."
"Growth is never an event, it's a process."
"Have books 'happened' to you? Unless your answer to that question is 'yes,' I'm unsure how to talk to you."
"The years nineteen and twenty are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older."
"She was a keen observer, a precise user of language, sharp-tongued and funny. She could stir your emotions. Yes, really, that's what she was so good at - stirring people's emotions, moving you. And she knew she had this power...I only realized later. At the time, I had no idea what she was doing to me."
"Language is very tough, though, a tenacity that is backed up by a long history. However it is treated, its autonomy cannot be lost or seriously damaged, even if that treatment is rather rough. It is the inherent right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of language in every way they can imagine-without that adventurous spirit, nothing new can ever be born."
"Do not compare yourself with anybody. Compare yourself with yourself, for yourself and by yourself. We are all uniquely pottered and purposed by our creator!"
"You have a life make a success of it."
"Still, the time I spent with her was more precious than anything. She helped me forget the undertone of loneliness in my life. She expanded the outer edges of my world, helped me draw a deep, soothing breath. Only Sumire could do that for me."
"When you sneak into somebody's backyard, it does seem that guts and curiosity are working together. Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Guts have to go for the long haul. Curiosity's like a fun friend you can't really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own-with whatever guts you can muster."
"Your heart influences your art."
"In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness."
"You greatest gift is who you are, not just what you do."
"I must be in love with this woman, Sumire realized with a start. Nomistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And thislove is about to carry me off somewhere. This current's toooverpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a specialplace, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurkingthere, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I mightend up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only gowith the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever."
"Maybe that's why people don't like you. You make it obvious you don't care whether people like you or not. That makses some people angry."
"You live by yourself for a stretch of time and you get to staring at different objects. Sometimes you talk to yourself. You take meals in crowded joints. You develop an intimate relationship with your used Subaru. You slowly but surely become a has-been."
"There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart."
"That amazing time in our lives is gone, and will never return. All the beautiful possibilities we had then have been swallowed up in the flow of time."
"He was going to die soon, you knew when you saw those eyes. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest traces of what had once been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all furniture and fixtures have been removed and which awaited now only its final demolition."
"I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal."
"I suddenly thought about my old girlfriend, the one I had first slept with in my third year of high school. Chills ran through me as I realized how badly I had treated her. I had hardly ever thought about her thoughts or feelings or the pain I had caused her. She was such a sweet and gentle thing, but at the time I had taken her sweetness for granted and later hardly gave her a second thought. What was she doing now? I wondered. And had she forgiven me?"
"Even if things were the same, people's perception of them might have been very different back then. The darkness of night was probably deeper then, so the moon must have been that much bigger and brighter."
"If global cooling will come soon - scientists will lose trust."
"An great building will never stand if you neglect the small bricks."
bottom of page