Yōko Tawada > Quotes

“I always feel myself being thrust back into loneliness when someone tells me it's cold on a hot day. It isn't good to talk so much about the weather — weather is a highly personal matter, and communication on the subject inevitably fails.”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“Being able to see the end of anything gave him a tremendous sense of relief. As a child he had assumed the goal of medicine was to keep bodies alive forever; he had never considered the pain of not being able to die.”
― Yōko Tawada, The Emissary

“Mold started to grow in my ears because no one ever spoke to me”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“I abhor the human stupidity and vanity that takes pride in forcing tigers, lions, and leopards to sit nicely side by side. It reminds me of the government choreography that displays brightly garbed minorities in a parade, minorities granted a crumb of political autonomy in exchange for providing an optical simulation of cultural diversity in their country of residence. But wild animals (as opposed to humans) form groups according to species to enjoy specific benefits.”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“I think hunting used to be important for human survival. Thats no longer the case, but they can't stop. A human being, perhaps, is made up of many nonsensical movements. But they've forgotten the movements necessary for life. These humans are manipulated by what remains of their memories.”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“Often it sickened me to hear people speak their native tongues fluently. It was as if they were unable to think and feel anything but what their language so readily served up to them.”
― Yōko Tawada, Where Europe Begins

“The concept of human rights had been invented by people who were thinking only of human beings”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“On his youth, Yoshiro had prided himself of always having an answer ready when someone asked who his favorite composer or designer was, or what kind of wine he preferred. Confident in his good taste, he had poured time and money into surrounding himself with things that would show it off. Now he no longer felt any need to use taste as the bricks and mortar fora structure called «individuality».”
― Yōko Tawada, The Last Children of Tokyo

“With children like this having children of their own, it was no wonder the world was full of children.”
― Yōko Tawada, The Emissary

“The tales told by the dead are fundamentally different, because their stories are not told to conceal their wounds.”
― Yōko Tawada, Where Europe Begins

“Time could not be compared with any sort of food: nibble at it as greedily as you liked, there was never any less of it. Knut felt powerless in the face of time. Time was a huge ice block made of loneliness.”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“Assuming he had knowledge and wealth to leave to his descendants was mere arrogance, Yoshiro now realized.”
― Yōko Tawada, The Emissary

“Your eyes aren't empty mirrors - You reflect human beings. I hope this doesn't make you mortally unhappy.”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“Adults arrogantly talked about whether food tasted good or not, as if a gourmet sensibility put you in a superior class of people,”
― Yōko Tawada, The Emissary

“Some humans claim to be made in God's image - what an insult to God. There are, however, in the northern reaches of our Earth, small tribes who can still remember that God looked like a bear.”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“Die Mauer in meinem Gedächtnis besteht weiter aus den bewaffneten Männern, die bereit waren, nach einer Anweisung auf Menschen zu schießen.
Auf unserem wasserblauen Planeten werden immer wieder neue Mauern gebaut. Wo eine Mauer steht, ist das Leben auf beiden Seiten bedroht.”
― Yōko Tawada, akzentfrei. Literarische Essays

“People are always saying the humanities are dead so it's strange how many conferences there are.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“so as not to hurt the feelings of young people who wanted to work but simply weren't strong enough, "Labor Day" became "Being Alive is Enough Day.”
― Yōko Tawada, The Last Children of Tokyo

“The faces around me were flushed from the wine. When jaw muscles relax, the atmosphere becomes relaxed as well. People’s mouths fell open like trash bags, and garbage spilled out. I had to chew the garbage, swallow it, and spit it back out in different words. Some of the words stank of nicotine. Some smelled like hair tonic. The conversation became animated. Everyone began to talk, using my mouth. Their words bolted into my stomach and then back out again, footsteps resounding up to my brain.”
― Yōko Tawada, Where Europe Begins: Stories

“Unable to turn back the clock, they let themselves be turned.”
― Yōko Tawada, The Emissary

“I had always found it unpleasant to have guests in my apartment. They filled up my rooms with strange sentences I would never have formulated in such a way. Today I found the sound of these sentences particularly unbearable. Sometimes I tried to follow only the sense of the conversation so as not to hear the sounds of the language. But they penetrated my body as though they were inseparable from the sense.”
― Yōko Tawada, Where Europe Begins

“But this way I can learn German. I’ll write in German, and you can save
time. No more translations.”
“No, that’s out of the question! You have to write in your own mother
tongue. You’re supposed to be pouring out your heart, and that needs to happen in a natural way.”
“What’s my mother tongue?”
“The language your mother speaks.”
“I’ve never spoken with my mother.”
"A mother is a mother, even if you never speak with her.”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“I was shivering with cold. The woman filled the pitcher again and repeated the process, but it looked less like a shower than a snake shedding its skin. The water slipped off her body like a transparent skin. “Unless I do this, I can’t forget the bad things. Instead of screaming out loud, I freeze the screams and rinse them from my skin.”
― Yōko Tawada, Where Europe Begins: Stories

“Poison often had no taste at all, so no matter how finely honed your palate, your taste buds weren’t going to save your life.”
― Yōko Tawada, The Emissary

“Within my roasting brain cells, the scaps of thought refused to cohere.”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“Homo sapiens is sluggish in its movements, as if it had too much superfluous flesh, but at the same time it is pathetically thin. It blinks too often, particularly at decisive moments when it needs to see everything. When nothing’s happening, it finds some reason for frenetic movement, but when actual danger threatens, its responses are far too slow. Homo sapiens is not made for battle, so it ought to be like rabbits and deer and learn the wisdom and the art of flight. But it loves battle and war. Who made these foolish creatures? Some humans claim to be made in God’s image—what an insult to God. There are, however, in the northern reaches of our Earth, small tribes who can still remember that God looked like a bear.”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“When my work takes me to an exclusive restaurant, I always order sole. Sole, unlike flounder, never tastes bland, and it’s also not fatty like salmon. I don’t know anything more delicious in Western cuisine. But it’s not just because of the taste I insist on sole. It’s the word itself. Sole, soul, sol, solid, delicious sole of my soul; the sole reason I don’t lose my soul, and my soles stand on a solid footing still… When I eat sole, I’m never at a loss for words with which to translate.”
― Yōko Tawada, Where Europe Begins: Stories

“She's always hated good-byes and as she got older she hated them even more.”
― Yōko Tawada, The Emissary

“Ich fand nirgendwo so viel Kindheit wie in der Deutschen Sprache. Schmatzen, schnaufen, schluchzen, schlürfen: Viele deutsche Wörter klingen wie Onomatopoesie. Für die Neugeborenen klingt vielleicht jede Sprache so wie Deutsch für mich.”
― Yoko Tawada, Talisman

“Once, in the supermarket, I bought a little can that had a Japanese woman painted on the side. Later, at home, I opened the can and saw inside it a piece of tuna fish. The woman seemed to have changed into a piece of fish during her long voyage. This surprise came on a Sunday: I had decided not to read any writing on Sundays. Instead I observed the people I saw on the street as though they were isolated letters. Sometimes two people sat down next to each other in a café, and thus, briefly, formed a word. Then they separated, in order to go off and form other words. There must have been a moment in which the combinations of these words formed, quite by chance, several sentenced in which I might have read this foreign city like a text. But I never discovered a single sentence in this city, only letters and sometimes a few words that had no direct connection to any "cultural content". These words now and then led me to open the wrapping paper on the outside, only to find different wrapping paper below.”
― Yōko Tawada, Where Europe Begins