Quotes from Ruth Ozeki

The first words of a book are of utmost importance. The moment of encounter, when a reader turns to that first page and reads those opening words, it's like locking eyes or touching someone's hand for the first time, and we feel it, too. Books don't have eyes or hands, it's true, but when a book and a reader are meant for each other, both of them know it

There had been moments when she'd sensed his presence nearby, like when the crows left her gifts, for example. Her trinket bowl was chockablock full of screws, paper clips, buttons, broken clamshells, bits of tinfoil, beads and stray earrings.

In trying to stop your tears, I was already obeying the officer's command to the letter, not out of patriotic allegiance, but out of cowardice, in order not to feel the pain of my own heart, breaking.

I started to think about how words and stories are time beings, too

She explained to me that young people need lots of exercise and that we should exhaust ourselves on a daily basis or else we would have troublesome thoughts and dreams, which would result in troublesome actions.

Once in a while a story is spectacular enough to break through and attract media attention, but the swell quickly subsides into the general glut of bad news over which we, as citizens, have so little control.

I would like to think of my 'ignorance' less as a personal failing and more as a massive cultural trend, an example of doubling, of psychic numbing, that characterizes the end of the millennium. If we can't act on knowledge, then we can't survive without ignorance.

Did he hear her? If he had opened his eyes just then, he would have seen his wife's lovely face hanging over him like a pale moon.

So when we left the apartment, it was this doomed unreal feeling I remember more than anything else, like we were bad actors in terrible costumes in a play that was guaranteed to tank, but we had to go out on stage anyhow. The

A book must start somewhere. One brave letter must volunteer to go first, laying itself on the line in an act of faith, from which a word takes heart and follows, drawing a sentence into its wake. From there, a paragraph amasses, and soon a page, and the book is on its way, finding a voice, calling itself into being. A book must start somewhere, and this one starts here.

Somewhere D?gen wrote about the number of moments in the snap of a finger. I don't remember the exact figure, only that it was large and seemed quite arbitrary and absurd, but I imagine that when I am in the cockpit of my plane, aiming the nose at the hull of an American battleship, every single one will be clear and pure and discernible. At the moment of my death, I look forward at last to being fully aware and alive.

As I bathe myself I pray with all beings that we can purify body and mind and clean ourselves inside and out.

When she had him along, the world looked different, and she liked the way she saw things she'd never seen before. . . But she noticed other things, too -- the way she herself felt acutely visible with the baby in her arms, and the way some people's faces lit up when they saw a child. His warm weight was like living ballast, thrumming with energy, giving her substance. Folks were drawn to that.

Ze truth about stories is that is all we are.' A famous Cherokee writer named Thomas King once said this. We are ze stories we tell ourselves, Benny-boy. We meck ourselves up. We meck each other up, too." I wondered if the Aleph was in his poem, or if I was. That would be weird, to be in someone else's poem, or someone else's book.

As someone who has to teach for a living, I shouldn't be saying this, but the planet can do quite well without books.

In my heart, I am American, and I believe I have a free will and can take charge of my own destiny.

Could Pesto be his own observer? Interesting question. He used to like to raise his leg and study his asshole. It didn't seem like this observation caused him to split into multiple cats with multiple assholes.

Adjunct teachers are the professorial equivalent of the migrant Mexican farm laborers hired during harvest. If you can get a good contract at the same farm every year, where the farmer pays you on time and doesn't cheat or abuse you, then it's in your best interest to show up consistently from year to year.

But that evening, I didn't hear anything, just the lady typing, which sounded like raindrops or starlings or pebbles being washed up on the beach by the waves. It was a nice sound, soothing, and pretty soon I just dozed off.

Time plays tricks on mothers. It teases you with breaks and brief caesuras, only to skip wildly forward, bringing breathtaking changes to your baby's body. Only he wasn't a baby anymore, and how often did I have to learn that? The lessons were painful.

we must keep up our studies even as civilization collapses around us.

I used to know how to feel. In war, these are lessons best forgotten.

while the hookers and junkies spun like windblown litter in their wake.

Osmium is the heaviest matter in the world, and now that I think about it, that's what my dad needed. He needed superheavy shoes made with osmium soles to hold him down to earth. You know how he said that whole thing about how music was space, and he didn't need to fly off to some other place because everything was so beautiful right here