Japanese Lit Quotes

“There's no end to suspicion once you get going.”
― Koushun Takami

“Might it have been nothing but life itself? Life; this limitless complex sea, filled with assorted flotsam, brimming with capricious, violent, and yet eternally transparent blues and greens.”
― Yukio Mishima, Thirst for Love

“A feeling of liberation should contain a bracing feeling of negation, in which liberation itself is not negated. In the moment a captive lion steps out of his cage, he possesses a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds to him; the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage. Etsuko however, had in her heart not the slightest interest in these matters. Her soul knew nothing but affirmation.”
― Yukio Mishima, Thirst for Love

“Consequently, [Terayama Shuuji] often played the buffoon to his more serious colleagues, as he did in a July, 1970, dialogue with Mishima Yukio . . . At one point, [Terayama] laughingly suggested to the very earnest Mishima that Tenjou Sajiki might sponsor a one-man show in which Mishima would demonstrate his famous ability to flex his carefully sculpted upper-body muscles. Mishima refused to be angered by this obvious lack of respect.”
― Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shuji and Postwar Japan

“彼は半分顔を隠していた黒い帽子を取った。顔があるべきところには顔がなく、そこには乳白色の霧ゆっくり渦巻いていた。

Él se quitó el sombrero que le cubría medio rostro, pero ahí, en donde tenía que estar el rostro, no había nada. En su lugar, una neblina de color blanco lechoso giraba suavemente en espiral.”
― Haruki Murakami, 騎士団長殺し―第1部　顕れるイデア編