Quotes from Fumiko Enchi

A woman's love is quick to turn into a passion for revenge--an obsession that becomes an endless river of blood, flowing on from generation to generation.

A woman's love is quick to turn into a passion for revenge--an obsession that becomes an endless river of blood, flowing on from generation to generation.

Happiness--a small-scale, endearing, harmonious happiness--surely dwelt here beneath the low-powered lamps in the tiny rooms of these houses. A small-scale happiness and a modest harmony: let a man cry out, let him rage, let him howl with grief with all the power of which he was capable, what more than these could he ever hope to gain in this life?

The secrets inside her mind are like flowers in a garden at nighttime, filling the darkness with perfume.

Even the sadistic misogyny of Buddha and Christ was nothing but an attempt to gain the better of a vastly superior opponent.

She was like a large white flower bathed in light, magnificent in her isolation.

You appear infinitely generous, but you are a woman of infinite passion, in hate as well as love.

Just as there is an archetype of woman as the object of man's eternal love, so there must be an archetype of her as the object of his eternal fear, representing, perhaps, the shadow of his own evil actions.

Her spirit alternated constantly between spells of lyricism and spirit possession, making no philosophical distinction between the self alone and in relation to others, and unable to achieve the solace of a religious indifference.

A faint tear wet Meiko's eye, so slight a bit of moisture that it passed unseen by Yasuko. Yet all the anguish of which she never spoke was compressed into that single drop

It's no game. Believe me, she is a woman of far greater complexity than you—or anyone—realize. The secrets inside her mind are like flowers in a garden at nighttime, filling the darkness with perfume. Oh, she has extraordinary charm. Next to that secret charm of hers, her talent as a poet is really only a sort of costume.

There. You see? You're already a pawn in her hands." She paused. "But you're not the only one. I am too. I can't escape after all. The more I want to, the more impossible it is. It's awful; it's as if my own will were paralyzed

Me ha parecido que la exhibición de las máscaras estaba destinada a una sola persona, mi suegra, no porque ella frecuente el teatro Noh o porque sea capaz de apreciar la calidad artística de las máscaras, sino por esa expresión de absoluta serenidad que tienen, esa especie de mirada dirigida hacia dentro. Creo que ella debe de ser una de las últimas mujeres japonesas que todavían viven así, dirigiendo hacia dentro sus energías más profundas.

We spend our lives crafting masks to fit the roles we are expected to play, but in doing so, we lose sight of who we truly are.

Fujitsubo had learned to mold herself to a man by dissolving her identity in his; the Rokuj? lady, in contrast, possessed a spirit of such lively intensity that she was incapable of surrendering it fully to any man. However tastefully clad in layers of sophistication, that spirit could not stay hidden for long once she had given herself to a man of Genji's rare sensitivity.

the Rokuj? lady was much more than a passing affair, and something in the way you wrote it made me certain: you must have loved someone else, someone young, not Akio's father. And that person died, didn't he? At the front." "Yes." Mieko said the one word, and nothing more.

Shyness emanated from his dark features; he seemed a good-hearted sort.