David Pilling > Quotes

“Only in economics is endless expansion seen as a virtue. In biology it is called cancer.”
― David Pilling, The Growth Delusion: The Wealth and Well-Being of Nations

“While his comrades got stuck in, Richie knelt beside Davey and turned him over. His cousin's cheeks had a blueish tinge to them, his eyes were closed. Richie pressed his ear against Davey's chest.
The heartbeat was strong enough. Alive, thank God. Unconsious, but alive. Richie took out his water bottle and upended it over Davey's face.
"Your debt is paid, cousin of mine," he said as a faint moan sounded in the other's throat. "Now let us be friends again.”
― David Pilling, Reiver: The Sword's Edge

“For the first time in years, his heart raced, and the old excitement flickered inside him. The excitement of impending battle, clash of arms, danger and glory. Cei had almost forgotten it. To be alive, on the very cusp of death, was the greatest feeling of all.”
― David Pilling, Medraut

“Well, bugger me," cried Jonas when he saw Richie with his bow, "is it Robin Hood or Adam Bell come to save us? Nay, it's Richie O'the Bow, hero of ballad and song!”
― David Pilling, Reiver

“Without discipline mankind reverted to barbarism.”
― David Pilling, The Hooded Men

“Leo’s smile widened into a toothy grin. “We shall see,” he said, “come. You have persuaded me into giving you a trial.”    We should have turned and ran away then, and saved ourselves a world of pain and grief. But we were not to know the future, or that Felix’s fate-stones had lied to him.”
― David Pilling, Caesar's Sword

“Today’s younger generation don’t know what growth is. Their experience is just downsizing and recession. That’s all they know of the Japanese economy. That’s why dreams are shrinking in Japan.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“Japan’s institutions proved just as fragile as its supposedly unshakeable buildings. In Tokyo, it took politicians several hours to work out what was going on. A cabinet meeting in the morning had been told erroneously that a quake had hit Kyoto, fifty miles from the actual site of the disaster. Communications had collapsed, meaning little information was getting in or out. Authorities dithered about whether they should send in the Self Defence Forces, Japan’s army-equivalent, which was still mistrusted by the public half a century after the war. The rescue response was so haphazard that yakuza gang members … were reported to be firs ton the scene with food and blankets. Into the institutional vacuum poured hundreds of thousands of volunteers whose actions began to see the idea that people, not governments, or bureaucrats, were the ones who could get things done. It was an unsettling turn of events for a population that had, by and large, trusted the authorities for four decades to do the right thing.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“Japan’s most neglected resource is its women. In a country with no oil, gas, or precious minerals, national prosperity is almost entirely predicated on the diligence and ingenuity of its people. But social conventions have suppressed the potential of half Japan’s population.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“For the younger generation to have any hope, I really hope the old system collapses totally.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“growth in a mature economy – as in a mature organism-- is not healthy, it’s cancerous”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“I can’t say unequivocally that Japanese women are oppressed or not oppressed. In hidden places, Japanese women always had power, it’s true. All Japanese men also have a tendency to suffer from mazacon,’ she [Natsuo Kirino] added, using the contraction of ‘mother complex’ to refer to the obsessive devotion men are said to harbour for their mothers. ‘That’s why Japanese women are seemingly rather strong … You talked about running the household accounts. But this means that men don’t have to worry about how much to save. They are relieved of such worries. Once you get married, it is not a case of man and wife, but man and mother.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“Our psyche is very insular. But we always see ourselves reflected in the mirror outside.’ That struck me [David Pilling] as a perfect summation of the Japanese paradox – and the root of some of its tragic missteps. Because of its insularity, Japan’s only way to understanding itself has been with reference to other nations.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“Perhaps striking an appropriate balance between stakeholder and shareholder capitalism is a legitimate matter for debate in any democratic society.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“A country we often think of as strong collectively but weak individually had shown itself to be the exact reverse. Japan, it turned out, was a nation of strong individuals and a weak state. Japan is a country of good soldiers but poor commanders.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“Back then, we thought we were right. But now we are kind of cool and we are thinking. What am I? What are we? I think that’s good. It happens in history. I think it is only a matter of time before we recover, economically, and mentally.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“Japan was not the easiest society to be the odd one out, she [Hiroko Arai] said. She thought the older teachers were more rebellious than the younger ones for whom the war was more distant. Unlike the generation after the war, younger Japanese had been taught to be more obedient. ‘I didn’t want to educate them to be so obedient. I wanted them to be critical of authority.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“My [Hiroko Arai] favourite phrase is “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”,’ she told me, quoting Thomas Jefferson. That meant standing up – or in her case sitting down – for what you believed in. When the Hinomaru flag was raised she remained resolutely stuck to her seat. As a punishment for her refusal to honour the national symbol, the school board forced Arai into early retirement with a reduced pension. She was also obliged to attend a ‘re-education seminar’ at which, she said, she was monitored y officials who noted her every reaction on a multi-coloured form. ‘During the Second World War, the Hinomaru flag and the Kimigayo became symbols of what we did,’ she said of Japan’s invasion of China and Southeast Asia. ‘I can’t show respect to these symbols.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“To pin the blame on culture is the ultimate cop-out.’ The culture of collusion inside the ‘nuclear village’ was hardly unique to Japan, Curtis [Gerry Curtis expert on Japan, Columbia university] continued. Hadn’t there been pretty much the same collusion in the US between bankers and their regulators, who turned a blind eye as some of the country’s biggest financial institutions led the nation towards the brink of financial ruin? If Japanese culture put the interests of the organization above the interests of the public, Curtis concluded, ‘then we are all Japanese”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“Japan's modernisation has proved what was once unthinkable to Europeans, whose colonialism was built on racist theories: non-whites could not match or even surpass western nations.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“The virtue and talent of Japanese women used to be seen as their ability to have everything go their own way without saying a word. But that is not enough anymore. They have to start making noise.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“There are things we are taught at school, for example that the Japanese bring in things from abroad and then adapt the to how things are done on these islands. That’s our self-image. That’s how we teach our children: that the Japanese are different. Such reinforcement through education could become a mantra.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“The existence of hostess bars is one of the reasons that Japanese men and women don’t get along,’ she [Natsuo Kirino] said. ‘You see, there are women who will perform services for men, pour their drinks, light their cigarettes. And at home, wives will cater to their husbands’ needs. There is a separation of roles, of being kind to men in two different settings. So men feel that, as long as they pay, they will receive service in such places. And when they go home, they will receive service from their wives. Japan is truly a kind of men’s paradise.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“She [Natsuo Kirino] drills into Japan’s more rancid layers in the years after the collapse of the economic bubble. There she discovers seams of poverty, violence, rage, and depravity in a society that mostly sees itself as refined and orderly.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“This arrogant, perfumed young noble, in his rustling silks and polished lamellar armour, knew nothing of the hardships of war.”
― David Pilling, Flame of the West

“The more he came into contact with corporate Japan, the more he became convinced it revolved around drudgery and pointless late-night drinking sessions.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“Living has become too hard.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“When he was informed of the king's refusal, Dafydd held a parliament over Christmas, probably at Dolbadarn. Here it was decided to carry on fighting.”
― David Pilling, The Rise & Fall of Dafydd ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales

“If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg.”
― David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

“Then again, I was never any good at plumbing the depths of a woman's heart.”
― David Pilling, The Heretic