top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Japanese Authors
"I don't look so closely at women's fashion, but from the 20th century on, people have had the freedom to express themselves and their individualities, and fashion is one of the most fundamental ways in which they do this, men and women are equally able to express themselves."
"Nothing gets transformed in your life until your mind is transformed."
"Adversity or opportunity is university."
"There is one thing I can say for certain: the older a person gets, the lonelier he becomes. It's true for everyone. But maybe that isn't wrong. What I mean is, in a sense our lives are nothing more than a series of stages to help us get used to loneliness. That being the case, there's no reason to complain. And besides who would be complaint to anyway? (A Walk To Kobe, Granta 124: Travel)"
"It's true though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night," the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. "You can't fight it."
"But you knoe, she's right. Every single day, each time I see her face, see her, it's utterly precious."
"Besides being the world the kind of sadness that can not be expressed in tears. You can not explain it to anyone. Unable to take any shape, settles quietly in the bottom of the heart as snow during the windless night."
"When you look at Japanese traditional architecture, you have to look at Japanese culture and its relationship with nature. You can actually live in a harmonious, close contact with nature - this very unique to Japan."
"To injure an opponent is to injure yourself. To control aggression without inflicting injury in the Art of Peace."
"The orthogonal features, when combined, can explode into complexity."
"In dealing with the China problem, the British and American side, which had particularly strong interests in China, should have based its judgments about the origins of the problem on direct observation of the actual circumstances at the time."
"A great many things which in times of lesser knowledge we imagined to be superstitious or useless, prove today on examination to have been of immense value to mankind."
"The idea of a Japanese comedian was not only a rarity, it was non-existent."
"My popularity plunged three years ago and I didn't try to court publicity."
"I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me."
"Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends."
"I started to work with cotton fabrics. I used cotton because it's easy to work with, to wash, to take care of, to wear if it's warm or cold. It's great. That was the start."
"People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they'll go to any length to live longer. But don't think that's the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive then in a fog, and I believe running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life - and for me, for writing as whole. I believe many runners would agree."
"The fate of a child is in the hands of his parents."
"The thing is, in English I'm able to write the lyrics as I'm making the song, once I'm done with the melody."
"I was dying to have a cat. But they wouldn't let me. My mother hated them. Not once in my life have I managed to get something I really wanted. Not once. Can you believe it? You can't understand what it's like to live like that. When you get used to that kind of life--of never having anything you want--then you stop knowing what it is you want."
"I think the biggest difficulty is that when I'm here in America, there's a necessity of using English, so I really have a great sense of really wanting to learn, but unfortunately when I head back to Japan, the necessity vanishes and so does my enthusiasm about learning."
"I think that ballads are always something where I can really become one with the audiance."
"The standard growth theory tells us that economic growth in per capita basis comes from mainly two sources: capital deepening and total factor productivity growth, or TFP growth."
"Nations rise and fall, flourish and decay, by what they believe in and by what their culture stands for."
"Or maybe that's what it's all about: this religion's substance is its lack of substance. In McLuhanesque terms, the medium is the message. Some people might find that cool."McLuhanesque?"Hey, look, even I read a book now and then, Ayumi protested. "McLuhan was ahead of his time. He was so popular for a while that people tend not to take him seriously, but what he had to say was right."In other words, the package itself is the contents. Is that it?"Exactly. The characteristics of the package determine the nature of the contents, not the other way around."
"I've been working on my autobiography, just pecking away in longhand. The more you write, the more you remember. The more you remember, the more detail you recall. It's not all pleasant!"
"We can also cut by heat - heat punch. And we also can cut by cold - extreme cold. When you cut with heat, it makes a mark. With cold, no mark. It depends on the fabric."
"Being all alone is like the feeling you get when you stand at the mouth of a large river on a rainy evening and watch the water flow into the sea. Have you ever done that? Stand at the mouth of a large river and watch the water flow into the sea?"
"According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people.In ancient times people weren't simply 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 arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone 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 half."
"Without this spirit, Modernist architecture cannot fully exist. Since there is often a mismatch between the logic and the spirit of Modernism, I use architecture to reconcile the two."
"True love is more than physical, emotional and romantical. It's an acceptance of all that has been, that is, will be and will not be."
"I got tired of different drum sounds so you buy different effects for more manipulation."
"If you think about it, an unfair society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit."
bottom of page