“I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.”
Quote collection
Thinking Quotes — page 932 of 4756
“Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.”
“When you're young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it's already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck.”
“Listen - God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like--they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American comping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o--God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't.”
“They take the circuits out of people’s brains that make it possible for them to think for themselves. Their world is like the one that George Orwell depicted in his novel. I’m sure you realize that there are plenty of people who are looking for exactly that kind of brain death. It makes life a lot easier. You don’t have to think about difficult things, just shut up and do what your superiors tell you to do.”
“Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.”
“What I saw wasn't a ghost. It was simply--myself. I can never forget how terrified I was that night, and whenever I remember it, this thought always springs to mind: that the most frightening thing in the world is our own self. What do you think?”
“I don’t know, I don’t feel right unless I’ve got the sea and mountains nearby. People are mostly a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel’s always linked to the lay of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even.”
“In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.”
“I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing.”
“That's all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every day. When you don't have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out - so far out you can't follow them all the way to the end.”
“If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you”
“I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else.”
“Of course life frightens me sometimes. I don't happen to take that as the premise for everything else though. I'm going to give it hundred percent and go as far as I can. I'll take what I want and leave what I don't want. That's how I intend to live my life, and it things go bad, I'll stop and reconsider at that point. If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit.”
“Narratives have the same power, I think. Some readers of my novels ask me, "Why do you understand me?". That's a huge pleasure of mine because it means that readers and I can make our narratives relative.”
“I used to think the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time. But it's not like that. It happens overnight.”
“You have to make an effort to always look at the good side, always think about the good things. Then you've got nothing to be afraid of. If something bad comes up, you do more thinking at that point.”
“I saw that she was crying. Before I knew it, I was kissing her. Others on the platform were staring at us, but I didn't care about such things anymore. We were alive, she and I. And all we had to think about was continuing to live.”
“I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die,” she said. “I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live.”
“It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everthing's being decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that.”