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Quotes by Japanese Authors
"I felt slightly superior to student politics, for instance. I had no reason to think this, but I thought of myself as slightly more seasoned. I became quite cynical talking to my student friends."
"All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma."
"Nations rise and fall, flourish and decay, by what they believe in and by what their culture stands for."
"FOCUS = Follow On Course Until Successful."
"You lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you're living a different kind of life there. In a world that's inside you."
"Julie Dryfus and I were both afraid of heights and in one scene, I had to be quite high up and I was rather terrified, but Julie was very kind, encouraging me and we got through that together."
"The Western poet and writer of romance has exactly the same kind of difficulty in comprehending Eastern subjects as you have in comprehending Western subjects."
"Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory."
"I didn't understand the American fascination with the Japanese schoolgirl. No, I don't think I can, really."
"I speak of the old Japan, because out of the ashes of the old Japan there has risen a new Japan."
"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."
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
"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."
"Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt."
"The great principle of Western society is that competition rules here as it rules in everything else. The best man - that is to say, the strongest and cleverest - is likely to get the best woman, in the sense of the most beautiful person."
"I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me."
"Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat's chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own."
"Some persons have ventured to say that it is only since Englishmen ceased to believe in the Bible that they began to discover how beautiful it was."
"As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened."
"There is a Japanese proverb that literally goes 'Raise the sail with your stronger hand,' meaning you must go after the opportunities that arise in life that you are best equipped to do."
"There are things I am more interested in than the clone thing. How are they trying to find their place in the world and make sense of their lives? To what extent can they transcend their fate? As time starts to run out, what are the things that really matter?"
"The staff at the Institute will present an analysis on how asset price fluctuations and subsequent structural adjustments influence sustained economic growth, based on Japan's experience since the second half of the 1980s."
"Thus, it was to seek true civilization and true justice for all the peoples of the world, and to view this as the destruction of personal freedom and respect is to be assailed by the hatred and emotion of war, and to make hasty judgments."
"We will not fail your expectations of us as a new nation dedicated to peace, democracy, and freedom."
"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?"
"Stop making someone else's looks your '#goals'. By all means aspire to be a better version of your current self, but don't glorify others when you yourself are glorious."
"Art is not in some far-off place. A work of art is the expression of a man's whole personality, sensibility and ability."
"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."
"Nothing gets transformed in your life until your mind is transformed."
"All men are 'real men', whether they wear KingGees or a pink tutu."
"The idea of a Japanese comedian was not only a rarity, it was non-existent."
"If you think about it, an unfair society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit."
"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)"
"I would like my architecture to inspire people to use their own resources, to move into the future."
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