Yasunari Kawabata Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Time, Perception, Novelists

  Yasunari Kawabata (1996). “Beauty and Sadness”, Vintage Books

  77 Copy quote

• The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Night, Men, Light

  65 Copy quote

• Put your soul in the palm of my hand for me to look at, like a crystal jewel. I'll sketch it in words.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Hands, Jewels, Soul

  48 Copy quote

• Our language is primarily for expressing human goodness and beauty.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Language, Goodness, Humans

  26 Copy quote

• The labor into which a heart has poured its whole love--where will it have its say, to excite and inspire, and when?

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Heart, Inspire, Labor

  Yasunari Kawabata (2013). “Snow Country”, p.157, Vintage

  40 Copy quote

• Seeing the moon, he becomes the moon, the moon seen by him becomes him. He sinks into nature, becomes one with nature. The light of the "clear heart" of the priest, seated in the meditation hall in the darkness before the dawn, becomes for the dawn moon its own light.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Heart, Moon, Light

  "Japan, the Beautiful and Myself". Yasunari Kawabata's Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 12, 1968.

  14 Copy quote

• I suppose even a woman's hatred is a kind of love.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Hatred, Kind, Kinds Of Love

  Yasunari Kawabata (1996). “Beauty and Sadness”, Vintage Books

  19 Copy quote

• Because you cannot see him, God is everywhere.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  "Home Before Dark: A Personal Memoir of John Cheever by His Daughter". Book by Susan Cheever, 1985.

  15 Copy quote

• The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Moon, Blue, Ice

  Yasunari Kawabata (2013). “Snow Country”, p.77, Vintage

  33 Copy quote

• Lunatics have no age. If we were crazy, you and I, we might be a great deal younger.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Crazy, Age, Might

  Yasunari Kawabata (2013). “The Sound of the Mountain”, p.111, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

• A secret, if it's kept, can be sweet and comforting, but once it leaks out it can turn on you with a vengeance.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Sweet, Comforting, Secret

  17 Copy quote

• People have separated from each other with walls of concrete that blocked the roads to connection and love. and Nature has been defeated in the name of development.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Wall, Names, People

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Girl, Mirrors, Light

  "Snow Country". Book by Yasunari Kawabata, 1948.

  37 Copy quote

• 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

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Tired, Years, Old Things

  Yasunari Kawabata (2013). “The Sound of the Mountain”, p.138, Vintage

  22 Copy quote

• Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?’ ‘You sometimes even feel sentimental for it.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Pain, Going Away, Doe

  Yasunari Kawabata (2013). “Thousand Cranes”, p.31, Vintage

  20 Copy quote

• Now, even more than the evening before, he could think of no one with whom to compare her. She had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Fate, Thinking, Decision

  Yasunari Kawabata (2013). “Thousand Cranes”, p.145, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

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

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Complaining, Able, I Can

  "Snow Country".

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Eye, Needs, Faces

  Yasunari Kawabata (2013). “Snow Country”, p.21, Vintage

  21 Copy quote

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

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Snow, Mountain, Ifs

  Yasunari Kawabata (2013). “Snow Country”, p.66, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

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

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Children, Autumn, Sound

  9 Copy quote

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

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Retirement, Writing, Age

  Yasunari Kawabata (2013). “Beauty and Sadness”, p.114, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Japan, Regulation, Way

  Yasunari Kawabata (2015). “The Master of Go”, p.57, Random House

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Stars, Fall, Moon

  Yasunari Kawabata (2013). “Snow Country”, p.44, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• They were words that came out of nothing, but they seemed to him somehow significant. He muttered them over again.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Significant

  Yasunari Kawabata (2013). “The Sound of the Mountain”, p.79, Vintage

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Mean, Games, Two

  Yasunari Kawabata (2015). “The Master of Go”, p.87, Random House

  16 Copy quote

Page 1 of 2

← Prev

1

2

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin