Yasunari Kawabata Quotes

The baby understands that its mother loves it. [...] Words have their origin in baby talk, so words have their origin in love.

But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it was had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence.

A child walked by, rolling a metal hoop that made a sound of autumn.

Again she lost herself in the talk, and again her words seemed to be warming her whole body.

...he heard a sound that only a magnificent old bell could produce, a sound that seemed to roar forth with all the latent power of a distant world.

He was conscious of an emptiness that made him see Komako’s life as beautiful but wasted, even though he himself was the object of her love; and yet the woman’s existence, her straining to live, came touching him like naked skin. He pitied her, and he pitied himself.

This is no world for gentle people

Her awareness of her body was inseparable from her memory of his embrace.

En el mundo había gente tan parecida entre sí que se los podría tomar por padres e hijos. Pero difícilmente existieran muchos en el mundo. Tal vez hubiera un solo hombre que pudiera corresponderse con una muchacha y una sola joven que combinara con un hombre. Solo uno para algún otro; y tal vez en todo el mundo una sola pareja posible. Viven como extraños, sin suponer ningún tipo de lazo entre ellos y hasta ignorantes de la existencia del otro.
Por casualidad suben a un mismo tren, se reúnen por primera vez y probablemente nunca vuelvan a encontrarse. Treinta minutos en el curso de toda una vida. Se separan sin decirse una palabra. Habiendo estado sentados uno al lado del otro, sin mirarse, sin darse cuenta del parecido, se alejan siendo parte de un milagro del que no tomaron conciencia.
Y el único admirado por la rareza de todo eso es un extraño que se pregunta si, al ser un accidental testigo, no estará participando de un milagro.

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

Along the coast the sea roars, and inland the mountains roar – the roaring at the center, like a distant clap of thunder.

He had thought on the train of sending his head to a laundry, it was true, but he had been drawn not so much to the idea of the laundered head as to that of the sleeping body. A very pleasant sleep, with head detached.

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

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.

Un dia, mientras escribia una carta, Otoko abrio el diccionario para consultar el ideograma 'pensar'. Al repasar los restantes significados (añorar, ser incapaz de olvidar, estar triste) sintio que el corazon se le encogia. Tuvo miedo de tocar el diccionario... Aun ahi estaba Oki. Innumerables palabras se lo recordaban. Vincular todo lo que veia y oia con su amor equivalia a estar viva. La conciencia de su propio cuerpo era inseparable del recuerdo de aquel abrazo.