Quotes from Y?ko Ogawa

I worried that if she were forced to say more, she might shrink farther away and disappear altogether.

Are you just going to stand there frying hamburgers while your child could be dying in a fire?

A problem has a rhythm of its own, just like a piece of music. Once you get the rhythm, you get the sense of the problem as a whole, and you can see where the traps might be waiting.

Everything will work out. Don't be afraid of breezes and scarves.

The ancient Greeks thought there was no need to count something that was nothing. And since it was nothing, they held that it was impossible to express it as a figure. So someone had to overcome this reasonable assumption, someone has to figure out how to express nothing as a number. This unknown man from India made nonexistence exist. Extraordinary, don't you think?

A heart has no shape, no limits. That's why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much.

The square root sign is a study one. It shelters all the numbers.

Smudges of darkness were beginning to collect around the roots of the trees, but they were still faint, as if the night had agreed to hold off for a bit longer.

When I closed my eyes, the world was filled with sound.

I don't really know why I'm crying. I can't explain it myself, much less stop it.

You can't write with your head. I want you to write with your hand," he said. It was rare for him to make a pronouncement like this, so I found myself simply nodding in silence. Then I stretched my hand toward him, fingers extended. "That's right. That's where the story should come from," he said, but he looked away, as though he had seen into the most vulnerable part of my body.

Memories don't just pile up—they also change over time. And sometimes they fade of their own accord. Though the process, for me, is quite different from what happens to the rest of you when something disappears from the island.

I feel empty when Root isn't here," I said. I hadn't really been speaking to him, but the Professor murmured in reply, "So, you're saying that there's a zero in you?" "I suppose that's what I mean," I said, nodding weakly. "The person who discovered zero must have been remarkable, don't you think?" "Hasn't zero been around forever?" "How long is forever?

It had seemed like a dream, far removed from reality, and yet there had been something amazingly vivid about the snow and being there with Jun. I remember being delighted to be alone in that special place, just the two of us; but I'm sure it must have been even more wonderful then, when we were young and knew nothing about the pain of growing up.

I needed to pretend to be myself at a younger, more innocent age, when we had stood marveling at the snow in the hall. I was sure that Jun would dive into only pure water, and I wanted his dive into me to be perfect; I wanted him to enter with no splash at all.

There were no bookshelves in the little apartment where we lived, so the Professor's study, with its stacks of volumes lining the walls, seemed magical to him.

All these things we had long since forgotten she gathered up one by one in her hands, caressing and warming them until they came back to life. It was as if she had come in place of the goddess of the rainbow to offer her grace and affection. She was perhaps the only one who ever truly loved the Hotel Iris.

The sound of time flowing between us became the sound of the water trickling quietly from the faucet until dawn.

I betrayed you," I said, so quietly that I hardly knew it was my own voice. It felt like a lie even though I told the truth. He stood perfectly still. A siren sounded, long and low. "You can't get home. They've stopped the boat," he said. Strangely, I did not think about Mother, or what I would tell her tomorrow. It seemed that tomorrow would never come,(…)

Jun's graceful body cuts through these childish emotions to reach the deepest place inside me.

My desires seemed simple and terribly complicated at the same time: to gaze at Jun's wet body and to make Rie cry. These were the only things that gave me comfort.

As I traced his profile with my eyes, I realized that I could never ask anything of him again: not caresses, not protection, not warmth. He would never dive into the pool inside me, clouded as it was with the little girl's tears. The waves of regret were gentle, but I knew they would ripple on forever.

Jealousy seems to make me suffer in the most unexpected ways.

The stronger my feelings for you become, the greater my fear, and the more freely I abandon myself to baseless speculations and anxieties. Yet the more I immerse myself in the profound joy of loving you. I beg of you to go on living in this world I inhabit. I suppose you find this a rather ridiculous request, but to me it is of the utmost importance that you simply exist.