Quotes from Ruth Ozeki

Life is evanescent, but left to itself it rarely fails to offer some consolation.

She smiled. "Life is full of stories. Or maybe life is only stories. Good night, my dear Nao.

I believe it doesn't matter what it is, as long as you can find something concrete to keep you busy while you are living your meaningless life.

There's something about the idea of writing, and thinking about writing as a form of prayer - the way as a writer you call out into the world and throw your words into the world. You're not praying to a god, but you're almost conjuring a reader to arrive. That's what books do: they're an invitation to readers.

I've always played that edge of fact and fiction. I used to be a filmmaker, and certainly in film that's a line that filmmakers cross more readily and more easily than novelists.

But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It's already then.

Everything in the universe is constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives.

The relationship between reader and writer is reciprocal in a way. We co-create each other. We are constantly emerging out of the relationship we have with others.

Any independent bookstore that has managed to survive is the best place to do a reading.

A person is born form the deep conditions of the world. A person pokes up from the world and roll along like a wave. Until it's time to sink down again. Up, down. Person, wave.

For the time being Words scatter Are they fallen leaves?

What if I travel so far away in my dreams that I can't get back in time to wake up?

I am really interested in the way we relate to time. In particular, the way readers and writers talk to each other. Casting your voice out into the future is very beautiful to me.

When I write fiction, I have the illusion of being able to control these fictional worlds and these characters, and to make them say what I want them to say. Of course, the problem is that it is an illusion, and by the end of it you realize that you're not in control of it at all; the characters have taken over, and they're driving the vehicle.

When I'm writing a novel, which is what I like to write, I get up early, sit zazen, make a pot of green tea. I wear wrist cuffs to keep my wrists warm and minimize irritation from extended contact with the surface of my desk. I sit down and write.

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

The important thing was that we were being polite and not saying all the things that were making us unhappy, which was the only way we knew how to love each other.

Writing is solitary. You spend so much time alone and in your own mind, telling stories.

Inspiration comes from everything from the entire world, and it's hard to pinpoint one thing. I can trace one inspiration to the writing of 13th-century Zen master Dogen Zenji, who writes beautifully about time.

What's fascinating to me is the way that multiple stories go into creating any world - a fictional world, but certainly the world that we live in as well. Of course, I cannot control that world. I can just control the fictional world.

My mind is like a gyre, and odd juxtapositions happen.

Canada has always been a great place for literature. It's strong and growing stronger, and there will always be reading, and there will always be great writers.

There's something about Vonnegut's deadpan irony that I really like. And I like Borges' puzzle structure.

For a writer, you definitely do not want to be in the mainstream. You want to be on the edge because that's where the vantage point is. That's where you can see.