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Quotes by Japanese Authors
"(When asked "Was the model for Midori (a character in Norwegian Wood) modeled after your wife?) I showed your message to my wife. She got mad and yelled: "What would make them think I was the model for Midori?! She told me to fix the misunderstanding immediately, so that's why I'm writing this reply now. Please stop causing problems in my household. Thank you."
"Lies are terrible things. One could say that the greatest sins afflicting modern society are the proliferation of lies and silence. We lie through our teeth, then swallow our tongues. All the same, were we to speak only the truth all year round, then the truth might lose its value."
"A question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime."
"Good intentions aren't enough, you must take right actions."
"There is an instinctive withdrawal for the sake of preservation, a closure that assumes the order of completion. Winter is a season unto itself."
"It was as if-this is something I thought of only later, of course-she was gently peeling bcd one layer after another hat covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling."
"I never once thought I wanted to be a soldier. I wanted to be a teacher. As soon as I left college, though, they sent me my draft notice, stuck me in officers training, and I ended up on the continent for twelve years. My life went by like a dream."
"If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn't, go for the one without form. That's my rule."
"That's how it is with art. Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning are incapable of such writing."
"Wasn't much of a life anyway. Wasn't much of a brain.""But didn't you say you were satisfied with your life?""Word games," I dismissed. "Every army needs a flag."
"Okay, let's put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it's alright if I don't sleep with you. What I'm saying is I'd like to be as fair as possible. I don't want to force anything on anybody, any more than I'd want anything forced on me. It's enough that I feel your presence or see your commas swirling around me."
"Sometimes I just get tired. I get headaches, and I just lose track. I mean, it's like which is me and which is the role? Where's the line between me and my shadow?"
"Am committed to creating a Peaceful, Sustainable and healthy world."
"Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind to yourself."
"Psychologically speaking (I'll only wheel out the amateur psychology just this once, so bear with me), encounters that call up strong physical disgust or revulsion are often in fact projections of our own faults and weaknesses."
"Telling lies is a really terrible thing. These days, lies and silence are the two greatest sins in human society you might say. In reality, we tell lots of lies, and we often break into silence. However, if we were constant;y talking year-round, and telling only the truth truth would probably lose some of its value."
"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."
"Tengo's lectures took on uncommon warmth, and the students found themselves swept up in his eloquence. He taught them how to practically and effectively solve mathematical problems while simultaneously presenting a spectacular display of the romance concealed in the questions it posed. Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of several of his female students, and he realized that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds through mathematics. His eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions stroked their backs; theorems sent warm breath into their ears."
"Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value."
"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?"
"The real world-where I probably could never be happy, and never get anywhere."
"Aspirations without preparations will simply give you life full of frustrations. Develop yourself today!"
"He sometimes wondered if she had become involved with him just so that she could cry in someone's arms. Maybe she can't cry alone, and that's why she needs me."
"Every invention began as an imagination."
"Here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair."
"You have a life make a success of it."
"He decided not to ask for details. Better to avoid exposing his ignorance even further."
"At the same time that 'I' am the content of a relation, 'I' am also that which does the relating."
"It was a stillness so profound one had to adjust one's hearing to it.....The silence seemed to be trying to tell him something about itself."
"Once the ego is born into this world, it has to shoulder morality."
"I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough."
"Like someone excitedly relating a story, only to find the words petering out, the path gets narrower the further I go, the undergrowth taking over."
"Real success is not rooted in positions, places or possessions, but in fulfilment of God's purposes for our lives."
"It was nothing but a hole, a mouth open wide. You could lean over the edge and peer down to see nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world's darkness had been boiled down to their ultimate density."
"Respond to your ability, play your part and make your mark in history."
"Sitting on the floor, I'd replay the past in my head. Funny, that's all I did, day after day after day for half a year, and I never tired of it. What I'd been through seemed so vast, with so many facets. Vast, but real, very real, which was why the experience persisted in towering before me, like a monument lit up at night. And the thing was, it was a monument to me."
"The most valuable gift you can give to humanity is a good example."
"It's easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether or not you clean up the shit."
"My father always told me: 'Give somebody a hand and he'll take an arm."
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