Japanese Author Quotes

The period of childhood is a stage on which time and space become entangled.

A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything.

But a haiku by Buson came into his mind: 'I try to forget this senile love; a chilly autumn shower.' The gloom only grew denser.

Yasunari Kawabata

The ancients waited for cherry blossoms, grieved when they were gone, and lamented their passing in countless poems. How very ordinary the poems had seemed to Sachiko when she read them as a girl, but now she knew, as well as one could know, that grieving over fallen cherry blossoms was more than a fad or convention.

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

I am the kind of writer who rewrites and rewrites. I am very eager to correct everything. If you look at one of my manuscripts, you can see I make many changes. So one of my main literary methods is repetition with difference. I begin a new work by first attempting a new approach toward a work that I've already written — I try to fight the same opponent one more time. Then I take the resulting draft and continue to elaborate upon it, and as I do so the traces of the old work disappear. I consider my literary work to be a totality of differences within repetition.
I used to say that this elaboration was the most important thing for a novelist to learn.

Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised.

Tea with us became more than an idealisation of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane.

Okakura Kakuzō

I came to the conclusion that the best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one's hand and ask: "Does this spark joy?" If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it.

I've become a lantern bearer, lighting the path this country will take.

And we are not mountaintop sages who can live by consuming mist.

To die or not to die... we really don't have a choice. We can therefore only take care of our life-body, until the fullness of time and being ends our existence on earth.

Happiness—a small-scale, endearing, harmonious happiness—surely dwelt here beneath the low-powered lamps in the tiny rooms of these houses. A small-scale happiness and a modest harmony: let a man cry out, let him rage, let him howl with grief with all the power of which he was capable, what more than these could he ever hope to gain in this life?

If, as the dowager had said, we are nothing but gene carriers, why do so many of us have to lead such strangely shaped lives? Wouldn't our genetic purpose-to transmit DNA-be served just as well if we lived simple lives, not bothering our heads with a lot of extraneous thoughts, devoted entirely to preserving life and procreating? Did it benefit the genes in any way for us to lead such intricately warped, even bizarre, lives?

Haruki Murakami

Intimacy between stepchildren and stepparents is indeed proverbially difficult.

Murasaki Shikibu

The top has no limits. We can keep on climbing. That's what people do.

Which will you take, the high road or the low road?" "Which one is longer?" "They're both short.

Yasutaka Tsutsui

If a man wanted to put the entire universe in his breast, he couldn't do it with his chest stuck out.

If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die

The truly correct proof is one that strikes a harmonious balance between strength and flexibility. There are plenty of proofs that are technically correct but are messy and inelegant or counterintuitive. But it's not something you can put into words - explaining why a formula is beautiful is like trying to explain why the stars are beautiful.

I know a lot about when I was a little girl, because my sister used to keep a diary. Today I keep her diary in a drawer next to by bed. I like to see how her memories were the same as mine, but also different.

Cynthia Kadohata

While one may lose much because of avarice, nothing was ever accomplished by abstinence.

I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn't have enough energy to do anything else.

Banana Yoshimoto