Kenzaburō Ōe - Society Quotes

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I think, we can only write very personal matters through our experience. When I named my first novel about my son A Personal Matter, I believe I knew the most important thing: there is not any personal matter; we must find the link between ourselves, our "personal matter," and society.

Kenzaburō Ōe

I think I am doing my works to link myself, my family, with society — with the cosmos. To link me with my family to the cosmos, that is easy, because all literature has some mystic tendency. So when we write about our family, we can link ourselves to the cosmos.

Kenzaburō Ōe

A dangerous atmosphere of nationalism is coming in our society. So now I want to criticize this tendency, and I want to do everything to prevent the development of fascism in Japanese society.

Kenzaburō Ōe

The fundamental style of my writing has been to start from my personal matters and then to link it up with society, the state and the world.

Kenzaburō Ōe