Yasunari Kawabata Quotes

Una de las muchachas era hermosa. Llevaba un bulto envuelto en un pañuelo con un diseño blanco de mil grullas sobre un fondo rosado de crespón

Maybe vagueness has been good for me. The word means two different things in Tokyo and Osaka, you know. In Tokyo it means stupidity, but in Osaka they talk about vagueness in a painting and in a game of Go.

One can’t stop and suddenly speak to a complete stranger, can one?......When it happens I could die of sadness. I feel somehow empty and drained....

In a gourd that had been handed down for three centuries, a flower that would fade in a morning.

إن العمل الشائن المقترف يرتبط بمقترفه، ويحكم عليه باقتراف أعمال شائنة أخرى، هكذا تتكون العادات السيئة.

As it became clear to Shimamura that he had from the start wanted only this woman, and that he had taken his usual roundabout way of saying so, he began to see himself as rather repulsive and the woman as all the more beautiful

Father's life was only a very small part of the life of a tea bowl.

In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted into a sort of symbolic world not of this world. Particularly when a light out in the mountains shone in the center of the girl's face, Shimamura felt his chest rise at the inexpressible beauty of it.

And then you may think of it as promiscuous, but the girl herself is asleep, and doesn’t even know who she has slept with. The girl the other time and the girl tonight will never know a thing about you, and to speak of promiscuousness is a little…

Ο γερο-Εγκούτσι μπορούσε να δει, με τα μάτια της φαντασίας του, την απέραντη σκοτεινή θάλασσα και το χαλάζι να πέφτει και να λιώνει μέσα της. Ένα άγριο πουλί, κάτι σαν μεγάλος αετός πετούσε ξυστά στα κύματα, κρατώντας στο στόμα του κάτι που έσταζε αίμα. Μήπως ήταν ένα μωρό; Δεν μπορεί να ήταν. Ίσως ήταν το φάσμα της ανθρώπινης κακοήθειας.

I gave myself up to my tears. It was as though my head had turned to clear water, it was falling pleasantly away drop by drop; soon nothing would remain.

From the way of Go, the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation. The road to advancement in rank, which controlled the life of a player, had become a meticulous point system. One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and the fragrance of Go as an art.

Two middle-aged American couples came back from the dining car and, as soon as they could see Mt. Fuji, past Numazu, stood at the windows eagerly taking photographs. By the time Fuji was completely visible, down to the fields at its base, they seemed tired of photographing and had turned their backs to it.

Quiero que nos abramos paso a través de nuestro destino y que flotemos sobre las aguas. El mañana siempre se nos escapa.

Perhaps it was a melancholy comfort for an old man to be sunk in memories of women who would not come back from the far past, even while he fondled a beauty who would not awaken.