A Tale For The Time Being Quotes

“Truth is like the moon in the sky. Words are like a finger. A finger can point to the moon's location, but it is not the moon. To see the moon, you must look past the finger. To look for the truth in books, the Sixth Patriarch was saying, is like mistaking the finger for the moon. The moon and the finger are not the same thing.

"Not same," old Jiko would have said. "Not different, either.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“She'd been betwitched. She'd pricked her finger and had fallen into a deep, comalike sleep.”
― Ruth Ozeki

“For the time being, standing on the tallest mountaintop,

For the time being, moving on the deepest ocean floor,

For the time being, a demon with three heads and eight arms,

For the time being, the golden sixteen-foot body of a buddha,

For the time being, a monk's staff or a master's fly- swatter,

For the time being, a pillar or a lantern, For the time being, any Dick or Jane,

For the time being, the entire earth and the boundless sky.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“You've probably seen him. The photograph shows a tiny man in a white shirt and dark pants, diving head first down the slick steel side of the building. Next to that gigantic building, he's just a small, dark squiggle, and at first you think he's a piece of lint or dust on the camera lens that got onto the picture by mistake. It's only when you look closely that you understand. The squiggle is human. A time being. A life. His arms are next to his body and his one knee is bent, like he's doing an Irish jig, only upside down. It's all wrong. He shouldn't be dancing. He shouldn't be there at all.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being