cora > cora's Quotes

“I love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake

“Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.”
― Haruki Marukami

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.”
― Hermann Hesse

“I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.”
― Herman Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“I desire the things which will destroy me in the end.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

“porque yo no pedí nacer en forma de signo de interrogación”
― Alejandra Pizarnik, Diarios

“I still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line...”
― Yukio Mishima

“...living is merely the chaos of existence...”
― Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
― Banana Yoshimoto

“As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“No matter where you are, you're always a bit on your own, always an outsider.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Goodbye Tsugumi

“I suppose I’m the one responsible for destroying myself.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque

“Every once in a while she'll get worked up and cry like that. But that's ok. She's letting her feelings out. The scary thing is not being able to do that. Then your feelings build up and harden and die inside. That's when you're in big trouble.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“From the moment of my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way to coexist with intense pain.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Could it actually be true that tears help people to heal?”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Asleep

“Living in a world such as this is like dancing on a live volcano.”
― Kentetsu Takamori

“I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“I wished the dream were real, and this reality a dream. But that wasn't the case. And that was why, whenever I woke up, I'd be crying. It wasn't because I was sad. When you return from a happy dream to sad reality, there's a chasm you have to step across, and you can't cross it without shedding tears. It doesn't matter how many times you do it.”
― kyoichi katayama

“But to me, it's a whole
lot more important to find something that makes you unafraid of
being alone, rather than to have so many friends that you wind up
being terrified of solitude.”
― Mitsuyo Kakuta, Woman on the Other Shore

“She
was afraid of getting too close to anyone. To her, closeness represented
a loss rather than a gain.”
― Mitsuyo Kakuta, Woman on the Other Shore

“It is painfully easy to define human beings. They are beings who, for no good reason at all, create their own unnecessary suffering.”
― Natsume Sōseki, I am a Cat III

“I am an inconsistent creature. Perhaps it is the pressure of my past, and not my own perverse mind, that has made me into this contradictory being. I am all too well aware of this fault in myself. You must forgive me.”
― Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro

“Your addiction to thinking will come back to haunt you.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Light and Darkness