Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 9

Nothing is more hallowing than the union of kindred spirits in art. At the moment of meeting, the art lover transcends himself. At once he is and is not. He catches a glimpse of Infinity... Freed from the fetters of matter, his spirit moves in the rhythm of things. It is thus that art becomes akin to religion and ennobles mankind. It is this which makes a masterpiece something sacred.
Kakuzō Okakura
Believe me. Your hardship, tears and sorrows you are facing now are the training of your spirit. The strength you learn from there brings you more love and smiles in your future. Wherever you are, love all the people around you like your family. then you are not alone anymore.
Hiroko Sakai
No one can escape their past. The sins we've committed... and the sadness we've caused... No matter how far we run, our past remains, as ever-present as the moon in the sky. It looms in wait... for the day when we are forced to face it. But only in doing so can we truly make peace and move on in hope towards tomorrow.
Phoenix Wright
Women are all born with a special, independent organ that allows them to lie. This was Dr. Tokai's personal opinion. It depends on the person, he said about the kind of lies they tell, what situation they tell them in, and how the lies are told. But at a certain point in their lives, all women tell lies, and they lie about important things. They lie about unimportant things, too, but they also don't hesitate to lie about the most important things. And when they do, most women's expressions and voices don't change at all, since it's not them lysing, but this independent organ they're equipped with that's acting on its own. That's why - except for a few special cases - they can still have a clear conscience and never lose sleep over anything they say.
Haruki Murakami
The root of all fear is imagination.
Atsushi Ohkubo
All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free?
Haruki Murakami
So you have to accept facts as fact.
Ai Yazawa
What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities.
Haruki Murakami
Even if it's a life in shackles, if you have somebody who accepts you for what you really are, how reassuring would that be?
Sui Ishida
Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.
Yoko Ono
As the greatest of detectives makes the greatest of criminals, a specialist in investigation is also a specialist in murder.
NisiOisiN
My design is no design.
Issey Miyake
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few
Shunryu Suzuki
In joy or sadness flowers are our constant friends.
Kakuzō Okakura
If we have received a precious gift from God, it is our imagination. When we tap into our powers of imagination, we are bombs of possibilities.
Hiroko Sakai
It’s because we help out when they’re in trouble that we can count on them to come running when we need it.-Shikamaru Nara
Masashi Kishimoto
Not everybody is looking for a boyfriend with a sports car.
Haruki Murakami
All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.
Haruki Murakami
Your "scared" and my "scared" are two different things.''What's that supposed to mean?' she asked.'As you get older, you don't recover from things so easy.''As you get older, you also get tired?''Yeah,' I said, 'you get tired.
Haruki Murakami
People say 'I love Artists', but what they really know about Artists? They've ever thought about sharing the real madness with us? I believe those extreme passions/emotions in me separated from the real world is the sauce to pull out the inspirations out of me that touch the core of people's hearts, which is usually wandering about deep inside of you unconsciously covered with the social taboo called 'common sense'.
Hiroko Sakai
I am afraid to die, though,' I whispered to myself. These turned out to be my last words. They were not very impressive words, but it was too late to change them.
Haruki Murakami
On the spur of the moment she decided to go and view the blossoms by herself in the dark night. It was a strange decision for a timid and unadventurous young woman, but then she was in a strange state of mind and she dreaded the return home. That evening all sorts of unsettling fancies had burst open in her mind.("Swaddling Clothes")
Yukio Mishima
All living things believe in someone superior to them, and cannot live unless they blindly follow them. Then, the objects of their faith try to escape this crushing pressure by seeking another being that is more superior to them to believe in. And they, in turn, seek a stronger being still. That is how all kings are born. That is how... all gods are born. –Aizen
Tite Kubo
You won't know the meaning of success without knowing how it feels to fail.
Kazu Kibuishi
What each of us believes in is up to us, but life is impossible without believing in something.
Kentetsu Takamori
If I do tell you the story, the two of us will always share it. And I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do. if I lift open the lid now, you’ll be implicated. Is that what you want? You really want to know something I’ve sacrificed so much trying to forget?
Haruki Murakami
Kumiko and I would visit their home and have dinner with them twice a month with mechanical regularity. This was a truly loathsome experience, situated at the precise midpoint between a meaningless mortification of the flesh and brutal torture. Throughout the meal, I had the sense that their dining room table was as long as a railway station. They would be eating and talking about something way down at the other end, and I was too far away for them to see. This went on for a year, until Kumiko's father and I had a violent argument, after which we never saw each other again. The relief this gave me bordered on ecstasy. Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion.
Haruki Murakami
If it's to protect our family, be it the Kingdom or the entire world... We would make anyone our enemy! That's what it means to be Fairy Tail!!
Hiro Mashima
Someone once said: "We do not make friends, we recognize them." And you'll know who they are because they play according to the same rules that you do.
Ken Niimura
If I sound as if I'm always predicting ominous things, it's because I'm a pragmatist. I use deductive reasoning to generalize, and I suppose this sometimes ends up sounding like unlucky prophecies. You know why? Because reality's just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life. You have to only open a newspaper on any given day and weigh the good news versus the bad, and you'll see what I mean.
Haruki Murakami
He calmed himself, shut his eyes, and fell asleep. The rear light of consciousness, like the last express train of the night, began to fade into the distance, gradually speeding up, growing smaller until it was, finally, sucked into the depths of night, where it disappeared. All that remained was the sound of the wind slipping through a stand of white birch trees.
Haruki Murakami
But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have for happiness where you find it, and not worry too much about other people. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.
Haruki Murakami
I, too, am among those unable to step outside the realm of worldly distinctions. I hide my excesses of joy and sorrow beneath a robe of false contentment and drown in a pool of tears unseen by others. How I envy those naive enough to covet the glory of others. Do they not realize that tears fall not only on the sleeves of worn and tattered kimonos? The jewels that spill, glittering, onto my brocade are the very water of life, but they are mistaken for mere ornament. Although no one notices, my heart is shattered into a thousand pieces.
Shikin Shimizu
It takes a lot of strength to hold onto and care for the things we love, so why is it that god seems to have made humans unable to conjure up that degree of power and love?
Ai Yazawa
This country awakens so many memories, though each seems like some restless sparrow I know will flee any moment into the breeze.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Thinking about lunch. Smoked salmon with pedigreed lettuce and razor-sharp slices of onion that have been soaked in ice water, brushed with horseradish and mustard, served on French butter rolls baked in the hot ovens of Kinokuniya. A sandwich made in heaven
Haruki Murakami
A palm-leaf carriage should move slowly, or else it loses its dignity.
Sei Shōnagon
I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didn't grow up. I had thought about that often since my sister got married. Do you become a character in a story native to that land, or do you, somewhere in your heart, want to return to your homeland.
Banana Yoshimoto
No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow.
Haruki Murakami
Whether we wound or are wounded, the blood that flows is red.
Eiichirō Oda
Looking back on months and years of intimacy, to feel that your friend, while you still remember the moving words you exchanged, is yet growing distant and living in a world apart—all this is sadder far than partings brought by death.
Yoshida Kenkō
Information is a lot like water; it's hard to hold on to, and hard to keep from leaking away.
Ruth Ozeki
Our faces were no more than ten inches apart, but she was light years away from me.
Haruki Murakami
When the Russian delegate this summer indicated the Soviet Union's interest in sending medical equipment, Dr Shigeto went right away to see the delegate and settle the matter tactfully. He is careful to steer clear of the superficial swirl of political maneuvering, but never misses any opportunity to improve the capability of the A-bomb Hospital or to enhance concretely the welfare of the patients. In that sense, he sometimes refers to himself as a 'dirty handkerchief.' That is, he serves to filter political purposes out of relief efforts so that the effect on patients is purely and concretely humane.
Kenzaburō Ōe
The world’s governments have many classified layers and outsiders rarely gain access to their hidden secrets. And certainly no common man can get confirmation of the existence of exotic technologies.
Takaaki Musha
Because the fact of not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride, I was never confronted by any impulse to express things and to make others understand something that I knew.
Yukio Mishima
Uncle Yuichi: Something's moving up there? Hmm... I don't see anything. It was probably a satelite. Punpun (with gums flapping): Could I have discovered a new planet?!(long pause) Yuichi: Yes! This could be a great discovery! If it really is a new planet... It'll be called Planet PunPun! Punpun (slobbering again): Do you think I'll win the Nobel Prise?! Yuichi: You sure are a greedy kid.
Inio Asano
Naturally—and why should I not admit this—I have occasionally wondered to myself how things might have turned out in the long run.... I only speculate this now because in the light of subsequent events, it could well be argued that in making my decision...I was perhaps not entirely aware of the full implications of what I was doing. Indeed, it might even be said that this small decision of mine constituted something of a key turning point; that that decision set things on an inevitable course towards what eventually happened. But then, I suppose, when with the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one's past for such 'turning points', one is apt to start seeing them everywhere.... What would have transpired, one may ask, had one responded slightly differently...? And perhaps—occurring as it did around the same time as these events?
Kazuo Ishiguro
But facts, remembered or not, are all, alas, still facts
Sōseki Natsume
There is no such thing as coincidence in this world. The only thing is hitsuzen.Hitsuzen...A naturally fore-ordained event. A state in which all other outcomes are impossible.
CLAMP
I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favourite feeling in the world.
Haruki Murakami
A little light in the dark night A faint voice is calling you This way! This way! This flickering, wavering little voiceLike dew, like a bonfireThe voice of insectsthe sound of the water You can never lose themonce you've heard them...
Natsumi Mukai
In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities, but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.
Haruki Murakami
Behind every work of art lies the enormous pretension of exhibiting one's vision of the world. If such obvious arrogance is not counterbalanced by the tribulations of doubt, all that remains is a monster who is to art what a fanatic is to faith.
Amélie Nothomb
I'm all alone, but I'm not lonely.
Haruki Murakami
No matter how dim the light filtering through the trees is, you can still try your best to grasp it. -Kaien Cross
Matsuri Hino
No matter where you are, you're always a bit on your own, always an outsider.
Banana Yoshimoto
I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.
Haruki Murakami
If you don't fight for him, you lose! Fight for him!~Nana Osaki
Ai Yazawa
On the Death of his ChildDew Evaporates And all our world is dew...so dear, So fresh, so fleeting
Kobayashi Issa