Quotes from Yasunari Kawabata

I could not bear the silences when the drum stopped. I sank down into the depths of the sound of the rain.

It's not right to live so long in this world only moving backward. -from Diary of My Sixteenth Year

From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation.

El tiempo corre de la misma manera para todos los seres humanos; pero todo ser humano flota de distinta manera en el tiempo.

The sound of the freezing of snow over the land seemed to roar deep into the earth. There was no moon. The stars, almost too many of them to be true, came forward so brightly that it was as if they were falling with the swiftness of the void.

Stop. I don't like it. I don't like having people die.

A voice so beautiful it was almost lonely, calling out as if to someone who could not hear, on ship far away.

Now that Otoko had heard about the night at Enoshima, that old love flared up ominously within her. Yet in those flames she could see a single white lotus blossom. Their love was a dreamlike flower that not even Keiko could stain.

Father's life was only a very small part of the life of a tea bowl.

For such a tiny death, the empty eight-mat room seemed enormous.

But love flowed into the apology, to coddle and mollify the guilt.

The notes went out crystalline into the clean winter morning, to sound on the far, snowy peaks.

My novel has found a beautiful soul. How shall I write it? Put your soul in the palm of my hand for me to look at, like a crystal jewel. I'll sketch it in words...

He closed his eyes and the warmth sank into his head, bringing an immediate sense of life. Reality came through the violent breathing, and with a sort of nostalgic remorse. He felt as though he was waiting tranquilly for some undefined revenge.

One can't stop and suddenly speak to a complete stranger, can one?......When it happens I could die of sadness. I feel somehow empty and drained....

THE TRAIN came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.

if you wanna be somebody be yourself dont try to be anybody your not

Love is my only lifeline.

Ella, mientras dormía, pronunciaba palabras de amor con los dedos de los pies.

Even when natural weather is good, human weather is bad.

Twenty years old, I had embarked on this trip to Izu heavy with resentment that my personality had been permanently warped by my orphan's complex and that I would never be able to overcome a stifling melancholy. So I was inexpressibly grateful to find that I looked like a nice person as the world defines the word. -from The Dancing Girl of Izu

oricat de bland si bun ar fi omul, tot are cugetul framantat dintr-o pricina sau alta.

and yet the woman's existence, her straining to live, came touching him like naked skin.

As it became clear to Shimamura that he had from the start wanted only this woman, and that he had taken his usual roundabout way of saying so, he began to see himself as rather repulsive and the woman as all the more beautiful