Yasunari Kawabata Quotes

Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.

The woman was silent, her eyes on the floor. Shimamura had come to a point where he knew he was only parading his masculine shamelessness, and yet it seemed likely enough that the woman was familiar with the failing and need not be shocked by it. He looked at her. Perhaps it was the rich lashes of the downcast eyes that made her face seem warm and sensuous. She shook her head very slightly, and again a faint blush spread over her face.

… el tiempo se divide en muchas corrientes. Como en un río, hay una corriente central rápida en algunos sectores y lenta, hasta inmóvil, en otros. El tiempo cósmico es igual para todos, pero el tiempo humano difiere con cada persona. El tiempo corre de la misma manera para todos los seres humanos; pero todo ser humano flota de distinta manera en el tiempo (…) Las corrientes del tiempo nunca son iguales para dos personas, ni siquiera cuando son amantes...

إلا أنني كنتُ في المدى الطويل ،لوحاً زجاجياً وحيداً ،كتلة زجاجية وحيدة
هل هناك شخص واحد من بيننا لا يحس بالزجاج على كاهله
؟

I could not bear the silences when the drum stopped. I sank down into the depths of the sound of the rain.

But love flowed into the apology, to coddle and mollify the guilt.

La profondità dell'essere umano è proporzionale alle esperienze vissute e alla lontananza del tempo in cui il suo animo si immerge.

And I can't complain. After all, only women are able really to love

"Humankind, with its long history, is by now a corpse bound to a tree with the ropes of convention. If the ropes were cut, the corpse would simply fall to the ground. Prayer in one's mother tongue is a manifestation of that pathetic state."

-from "A Prayer in the Mother Tongue"

He could not call up the faces of his own mother and father, who had died three or four years before. He would look at a picture, and there they would be. Perhaps people were progressively harder to paint in the mind as they near one, loved by one. Perhaps clear memories came easily in proportion as they were ugly.

I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business.

The day you die.

The train came out of the long border tunnel — and there was the snow country. The night had turned white.

It's remarkable how we go on year after year, doing the same old things. We get tired and bored, and ask when they'll come for us

ربما ليس هناك بوذا للعجائز لكى يبتهلوا إليه لكن فتاة عارية جميلة يضمونها بين أذرعهم ذارفين دموعا باردة غارقين فى شهقات قوية منتحبين , فتاة غافلة عن كل شىء ولن تستفيق مطلقاً تمنحهم حريتهم المطلقة فى الندم حريتهم المطلقة فى النحيب دون أن يشعروا بأى ندم أو طعن كبريائهم أفلا يمكن إذا إعتبار الجميلات النائمات من هذه الوجهة إلهات مثل بوذا ونابضات بالحياة فوق ذلك ؟ أليست رائحة فتاة شابة وبشرتها تكفيراً للعجائز التاعسين وتعزية لهم !؟ ص 91

"Among those who give thoughts to things, is there one who does not think of suicide?" With me was the knowledge that that fellow Ikkyu twice contemplated suicide. I have "that fellow", because the priest Ikkyu is known even to children as a most amusing person, and because anecdotes about his limitlessly eccentric behavior have come down to us in ample numbers. It is said of him that children climbed his knee to stroke his beard, that wild birds took feed from his hand. It would seem from all this that he was the ultimate in mindlessness, that he was an approachable and gentle sort of priest. As a matter of fact he was the most severe and profound of Zen priests. Said to have been the son of an emperor, he entered a temple at the age of six, and early showed his genius as a poetic prodigy. At the same time he was troubled with the deepest of doubts about religion and life. "If there is a god, let him help me. If there is none, let me throw myself to the bottom of the lake and become food for fishes." Leaving behind these words he sought to throw himself into a lake, but was held back. … He gave his collected poetry the title "Collection of the Roiling Clouds", and himself used the expression "Roiling Clouds" as a pen name. In his collection and its successor are poems quite without parallel in the Chinese and especially the Zen poetry of the Japanese middle ages, erotic poems and poems about the secrets of the bedchamber that leave one in utter astonishment. He sought, by eating fish and drinking spirits and having commerce with women, to go beyond the rules and proscriptions of the Zen of his day, and to seek liberation from them, and thus, turning against established religious forms, he sought in the pursuit of Zen the revival and affirmation of the essence of life, of human existence, in a day civil war and moral collapse.