Rieko Yoshihara > Quotes

“The Man’s upturned blue eyes were so unimaginably beautiful that they could make anybody tremble with awe. In this moment, however they also glimmered with an icy fire, perhaps revealing the fury of his wounded pride, or rather, a manifestation of his uncontrollable obsession.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“I so cherish these enlivening moments when you defy me even as a Blondy. When you react to me so humanly. I feel myself tingling right down to the center of my brain. I love how you look at me with such undisguised disdain. It's so endearing I want to rip out your beating heart and press it to my cheek.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 4: Suggestion

“Unshackled freedom’ did not mean doing whatever a person felt like without outside interference. To take up the reins of freedom, it was necessary to respect the rule of law and to cooperate. Otherwise, a person could cry ‘freedom’ until he was blue in the face and his ideals would remain idle visions.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“He was far beyond being fed up with it all, to the point that his simmering irritation was close to boiling over. He would be a slave to no one. No shackles would bind his hands and feet. He would be free, and yet the fetters of the past that he wished to fast aside instead held him fast, an invisible weight burdening his every step.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“So Tanagura attempted to bring to pass even greater prosperity by repudiating the shackles of flesh and blood that defined the boundaries of human existence and rejecting the limits of human mortality.

Quite simply, none other but this deformed conclusion could have ever been born out of the wild delusions of Jupiter’s ego. Therein was a reality, a glimpse of an eventual future in which human beings, who were bound by the irrevocable limits of death, would be brought forth to serve immortal machines.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“Luke snorted with derision. ‘What it comes down to is, they’re just a bunch of horny, fucked up, nouveau riche types. Aside from the fact that we fuck ourselves up on stout instead, there’s no big difference between us and them.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“Kirie didn’t know that he was a frog stuck at the bottom of a well. He didn’t even comprehend the nature of this dumping ground in which he vented his excessive passions. He grasped only the illusions crawling out of the bottom of a bottle of stout as he gasped for air.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“That in time good and evil should become accommodated to each other is perhaps only human nature. Take things far enough and evil becomes good. Against the backdrop of such a reality, human character was no doubt likely to come up short as the wheels of reason spun off their bearings.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“Translucent golden hair. Finely-textured white skin. Moist red lips. Delicate and youthful features that made sexual identity difficult to discern, but contradictorily, at the same time cast off a strange and alluring charm that sent a chill up the spine.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“The flower had unexpectedly fallen to the ground at their feet. Rather than picking it up and loving it, they would rather trample it into the mud. Countless numbers had become slaves to that kind of perverse pleasure.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“As far as he was concerned, a kid who’d won life’s lottery because of his genes and not his own hard work wasn’t worth the trash in the gutter. He wasn’t about to address as equals those who had no interest in knowing the difference.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 4: Suggestion

“Common practice was to drown themselves in drugs and alcohol, seal themselves within the shell of the self, and flee the visions of the past by briefly escaping into that waking dream.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“The greatest thrill and the biggest turn-on is the power over life and death.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“The same way Riki couldn’t put the humiliation behind him, Iason, more willingly, hadn’t been able to let go.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 3: Nightmare

“You are my pet. Know this to the marrow of your bones.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 3: Nightmare

“Choosing meant nothing without being chosen.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 4: Suggestion

“If Kirie couldn’t have Riki, then he would foster a hatred so deep the scar would remain forever on Riki’s heart. And by doing so, Kirie would ensure that he’d never be forgotten. Guy never would have believed that Kirie could make his intentions so clear.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 5: Darkness

“If he didn’t change, the world around him wouldn’t change either. Nothing would happen. His future was in his own hands, and he had the feeling that right now this was something more than a daydream.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 2: Destiny

“If you’ve got the time to get pissed off about it, then you’ve got the time to get used to it.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 2: Destiny

“In every room of the palatial tower in Eos that housed the Tanagura elite lived the youth called furniture.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 3: Nightmare

“Riki set off fully aware of the past, but with his eyes set firmly on the future. When he’d left Guy he’d made a vow. ‘Only a loser stops to look back.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“Despite all the lily-white publicity campaigns in the world, as long as people existed, the breeding grounds of sin and selfishness would exist. That was the price of being born human.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 2: Destiny

“Inside Guardian’s gilded birdcage, the heir to the Kuger throne-the little prince, so clueless and vain-anxiously awaited Kirie to be allowed in.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 4: Suggestion

“Prejudice is not a state of mind easily changed. There’s no shortage of assholes who spin the finest of webs with their words but speak another language in their hearts, and it’s going to stay that way for generations to come”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 2: Destiny

“Amidst the empty conversations and meaningless hot air jabbered by the untethered tourists and sightseers, he alone walked on with his feet stuck firmly to the ground. His slender frame anchored to a spine of steel, he was a rock against the waves of humanity.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 2: Destiny

“There were as many different human values as there were humans. Change the star under which one was born, and a different man created a different reality, even in the same time and place.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 5: Darkness

“One day it suddenly awakened to the truth of its own existential reality. Its so-called human ‘creators’ could only regard what ensued as the crazed behavior of a lunatic. Declared the computer:

‘Only those fit to exercise power should wield it.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“It was only in that dark, narrow place that he could define the boundaries of his world so he shut himself away.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 6: Metamorphose

“Being hated from the heart is a thousand times better than being ignored. That way, I would never be far from his thoughts. I’m telling you, it’s like nothing else in the world. It even beats sex.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 5: Darkness

“But one day inexorably followed the next. The mongrels asked nothing of why they were there or why they even existed. The rain fell on the just and the unjust alike. The high and the low. And so without debate, seeking no excuses, they swallowed their delight and anger, sorrow and pleasure, and accepted things as they stood.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 5: Darkness