Yasunari Kawabata

Novelist

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and Nobel laureate, known for his lyrical prose and exploration of themes like nature and loneliness in works like 'Snow Country.'

Born
June 14, 1899
Died
April 16, 1972
Quotes
32
Rank
#271

Quote collection

Yasunari Kawabata quotes (page 2 of 2)

32 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

"The sound of the freezing of snow over the land seemed to roar deep into the earth. There was no moon. The stars, almost too many of them to be true, came forward so brightly that it was as if they were falling with the swiftness of the void. As the stars came nearer, the sky retreated deeper and deeper into the night color. The layers of the Border Range, indistinguishable one from another, cast their heaviness at the skirt of the starry sky in a blackness grave and somber enough to communicate their mass. The whole of the night scene came together in a clear, tranquil harmony."

Read quote 9 likes
Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

"The snow on the distant mountains was soft and creamy, as if veiled in a faint smoke."

Read quote 9 likes
Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

"I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business. The day you die."

Read quote 8 likes
Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

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

Read quote 8 likes
Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

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

Read quote 8 likes
Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

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

Read quote 6 likes
Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

"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."

Read quote 6 likes
Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

"THE TRAIN came out of the long tunnel into the snow country."

Read quote 6 likes
Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

"But a haiku by Buson came into his mind: 'I try to forget this senile love; a chilly autumn shower.' The gloom only grew denser."

Read quote 5 likes
Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

"A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned."

Read quote 5 likes
Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

"Even if you have the wit to look by yourself in a bush away from the other children, there are not many bell crickets in the world. Probably you will find a girl like a grasshopper whom you think is a bell cricket.And finally, to your clouded, wounded heart, even a true bell cricket will seem like a grasshopper. Should that day come, when it seems to you that the world is only full of grasshoppers, I will think it a pity that you have no way to remember tonight's play of light, when your name was written in green by your beautiful lantern on a girl's breast."

Read quote 5 likes
Yasunari Kawabata Novelist
Popular

"The winter moon becomes a companion, the heart of the priest, sunk in meditation upon religion and philosophy, there in the mountain hall, is engaged in a delicate interplay and exchange with the moon; and it is this of which the poet sings."

Read quote 4 likes