Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 7

To study the self is to forget the self. Maybe if you sat enough zazen, your sense of being a solid, singular self would dissolve and you could forget about it. What a relief. You could just hang out happily as part of an open-ended quantum array.
Ruth Ozeki
Put your soul in the palm of my hand for me to look at, like a crystal jewel. I'll sketch it in words...
Yasunari Kawabata
If an angelic being fell from the sky and tried to live in this world of ours I think even they would commit many wrongs.
Sui Ishida
If formality and courtesy take over the feelings . . . how silly and meaningless these things could become. And despite all this, I still take part in it!
Fumio Obata
A child's growth is defined entirely by the adult that raises him.
Naoki Urasawa
Morino: What does the kidnapper do with those things?Yuka: Those things?Morino: You know, the stinky things with four legs that make a lot of
Otsuichi
April ended and May came along, but May was even worse than April. In the deepening spring of May, I had not choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass - but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.
Haruki Murakami
It’s a marvelous thing, the ocean. For some reason when two people sit together looking out at it, they stop caring whether they talk or stay silent. You never get tired of watching it. And no matter how rough the waves get, you’re never bothered by the noise the water makes by the commotion of the surface - it never seems too loud, or too wild.
Banana Yoshimoto
We're on the same wavelength. We're connected that way, even if I'm away from her.
Haruki Murakami
Gay men! And it's incest! With the same face!
Bisco Hatori
Still, this was on the order of a minor miracle, running across someone to whom you can express your feeling so clearly, so completely. Most people go their entire lives without meeting a person like that. It would have been mistake to label this "love". It was more like total empathy.
Haruki Murakami
They say it's a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of writers - and I'm talking the most talented - are able to pull off the irrational synthesis you find in dreams.
Haruki Murakami
If [hand-drawn animation] is a dying craft, we can't do anything about it. Civilization moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That's rare in any era.
Hayao Miyazaki
This is my sin for giving in to my own weaknesses. My heart just couldn't keep up with the gigantic gap between dreams and reality. -Jellal Fernandes
Hiro Mashima
And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
Haruki Murakami
Romantic EgoistNozomi: You've got an idea in your head... how you should act, but you can't act like, so you stifle yourself and don't even try.
Bisco Hatori
Everything seems pointless since you left
Haruki Murakami
Like dry ground welcoming the rain, he let the solitude, silence, and loneliness soak in.
Haruki Murakami
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?
Haruki Murakami
I didn’t have the vaguest idea of what to do – I couldn’t keep staring at the wall forever, I told myself. But even that admonition didn’t work. A faculty advisor reviewing a graduation thesis would have had the perfect comment: you write well, you argue clearly, but you don’t have anything to say.
Haruki Murakami
She didn't shed a tear. Angels don't cry.
Hiroshi Sakurazaka
We're supposed to strive for harmony, and that's what the art of tea is supposed to accomplish... but harmony is very, very difficult to achieve in this country. Tea ceremony is powerless. But it's also not such a bad thing either. You should enjoy it while you can.
Koushun Takami
I guess time doesn't flow in order, does it - A, B, C, D? It just sort of goes where it feels like going.
Haruki Murakami
That's why I won't give up! I'll continue to move forward because I believe!
Natsuki Takaya
Her words didn’t have the acrid smell of death.
Haruki Murakami
Did not we vow that we would neither of us be either before or after the other even in travelling the last journey of life? And can you find it in your heart to leave me now?
Murasaki Shikibu
I just didn't want to be a loser anymore...-Mitsuko Souma
Koushun Takami
We ran into lots of old friends. Friends from elementary school, junior high school, high school. Everyone had matured in their own way, and even as we stood face to face with them they seemed like people from dreams, sudden glimpses through the fences of our tangled memories. We smiled and waved, exchanged a few words, and then walked on in our separate directions.
Banana Yoshimoto
Man cries, his tears dry up and run out. So he becomes a devil, reduced to a monster.
Kohta Hirano
That Seigo could go into geisha houses, accept luncheon invitations, drop in at the Club, see people off at Shimabashi, meet them at Yokohama, run out to Oiso to humor the elders—that he could put in his appearance at large gatherings from morning to evening without seeming either triumphant or dejected—this must be because he was thoroughly accustomed to this kind of life, thought Daisuke; it was probably like the jellyfish's floating in the sea and not finding it salty.
Sōseki Natsume
Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, “I know what Zen is,” or “I have attained enlightenment.” This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.”-“When you are sitting in the middle of your own problem, which is more real to you: your problem or you yourself? The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact. ”-“Knowing that your life is short, to enjoy it day after day, moment after moment, is the life of “form is form and emptiness is emptiness.”-“You may feel as if you are doing something special, but actually it is only the expression of your true nature; it is the activity which appeases your inmost desire. But as long as you think you are practicing zazen for the sake of something, that is not true practice.”-“The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture.
Shunryu Suzuki
Its Barnum & Bailey world just as phony as it can be,But it would't be make-believe if you believed in me
Haruki Murakami
There are many people who say there's a God somewhere up there but, God is nothing more than a formula. Just a part of some law of physics that we have yet to understand.
Mohiro Kitoh
Reunion will come.
Atsuko Asano
Is that your reason for fighting?! We're different!!! We fight for the sake of our injured friends!!! No matter if our opponents are humans, demons, or even gods!!!
Hiro Mashima
The only things that erased my lonliness were written works
Novala Takemoto
If you wish to know the divine feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand.
Eido Tai Shimano Roshi
The Amida Buddha delivers those who recognize their own weakness and cowardice... Those who admit their own faults and above all, those who believe... A wholehearted trust in Amida Buddha gives peace of mind to those who've known despair. Even the most vicious and evil of sinners will attain salvation and be reborn in paradise... Even a piece of shit like me!
Naoyuki Ochiai
A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.
Daisaku Ikeda
In a mad world, only the mad are sane.
Akira Kurosawa
He was glad to be human. For sure, it was a great inconvenience to have to walk on two legs and wear clothes. There were so many things he didn’t know. Yet had he been a fish or a sunflower, and not a human being, he might never have experienced this emotion.
Haruki Murakami
It's hard not being able to see you, but my life in Tokyo would be a lot worse if it weren't for you.
Haruki Murakami
I was the chain that bit into my ankle, and I was the ruthless guard that never slept.
Haruki Murakami
I've always loved fixing broken things.If something fixed by myself caused a smile, I'd feel saved. In that case it would be worth it. And I was delighted.
Hiro Kiyohara
I'm an idiot like you said, so whatever you say about me doesn't matter, but you know... Don't you dare point a gun at your own brother!
Kazue Kato
Spending time with the ones who are dear to you is like being in a dream, is it not?
Sakura Tsukuba
One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.
Dōgen
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.
Haruki Murakami
Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can't ever lose.
Ruth Ozeki
Justice without strength isn't justice at all.
Shinjirou
Loneliness—since I was trying to escape it—was hell; and yet for the hermit who seeks it, it is apparently happiness.
Kōbō Abe
I study the chessboard and concede defeat."You can gain yourself in five moves" says the Colonel. "Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over.
Haruki Murakami
Please, no one touch my heart. Don't touch it. Don't notice anything. No one has to know what my heart is feeling. I decided that I wouldn't turn back. That's why I threw everything away. So, don't you ever say, "I'm lonely.
Arina Tanemura
Wasn't it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core-- a tiny flame to cup one's hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.
Haruki Murakami
I, who was empty… I made myself believe that I could only fill it.. by falling in love… at that time to me.. in this world around you, Nana... Everything was so shiny that I was blinded. That doesn’t mean that anyone would suit me… I just wanted to be in the same light as you.
Ai Yazawa
I stayed in the town until earlyevening, and when the sun began to sink, my heart did too. This is your last chance to goback, I told myself. Once it gets completely dark, you might never be able to leave here. Iwent home on the same buses that had brought me there. I arrived before seven, and no onenoticed that I had run away.
Haruki Murakami
Often we may even smile or laugh at adversity, but all people share the same passions. They are merely manifest differently according to one's culture and conditioning.
Yasuo Kuwahara
Just Echo.
Jun Mochizuki
All right people, listen up! If you've got a family back home waiting for you or if you just want to save your own skin, turn around and walk away. Also, women! I have no intention of fighting any women!
Hiromu Arakawa
Imagine the clouds drippingDig a hole in your garden to put them in
Yoko Ono