Quotes from Yasunari Kawabata

The Milky Way came down just over there, to wrap the night earth in its naked embrace. There was a terrible voluptuousness about it.

Eguchi sintió una oleada de compasión por ella. Se le ocurrió una idea: los viejos tienen la muerte, y los jóvenes el amor, y la muerte viene una sola vez y el amor muchas.

Siempre recordaré que estuve en tus brazos frente a una antigua sepultura, en una mañana como ésta. Es muy extraño que una tumba cree un recuerdo.

Hay por aquí algún demonio intentando reírse de mi?

Nothing is so strange when one is in love.

I couldn't explain philosophy myself, and I doubt you could, either. Although it's ...' Her mother paused. 'I suppose it involves feeling something, and then using that feeling as a starting point for a train of thought. The feeling itself may be naïve, a lingering sense of wonder at something most people take for granted but you hold on to it, and think it through as far as you can. Does that sound right?

It was a stern night landscape. 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. As the stars came nearer, the sky retreated deeper and deeper into the night color.

Me temo que no es tan sencillo. Haces demasiado caso de tu propio sentimentalismo y de tu descontento por no ser capaz de morir.

Estoy intentando pensar como los ancianos que están más tristes que yo

An old notice was pasted to a wall beside the road: "Pay for field hands. Ninety sen a day, meals included. Women forty per cent less.

Un demonio vendrá a buscarte -dijo, arrimándose a la notable piel de la muchacha.

As death approaches, memory erodes. Recent memories are the first to succumb. Death works its way backward until it reaches memory's earliest beginnings. Then memory flares up for an instant, just like a flame about to go out. That is the 'prayer in the mother tongue.' -from A Prayer in the Mother Tongue

They were quite free to indulge in unlimited dreams and memories of women. Was that not why they felt no hesitation at paying more than for women awake? And the old men were confident in the knowledge that the girls put to sleep for them knew nothing of them. Nor did the old men know anything of the girls—not even what clothes they wore—to give clues of position and character. The reasons went beyond such simple matters as disquiet about later complications.

If man had a tough,hairy hide like a bear,his world would be different indeed- It was through a thin , smooth skin that man loved.

Eguchi, now sixty-seven, had lost many friends and relations, but the memory of the girl was still young. Reduced now to three details, the baby's white cap and the cleanness of the secret place and the blood on the breast, it was still clear and fresh.

Now that he was near her, this sighing of the human skin took on a dreamlike quality like the spell of the mountains.

Is it a boy or a girl? It's a girl. Really! Can't you tell by looking at it? Is it mine? It is not. Oh? Well, if it is, you needn't say so now. You can say when you feel like it. Years and years from now. It is not. It really is not. I haven't forgotten that I loved you, but you are not to imagine things.

Por qué, entre todos los animales, en el largo curso del mundo, solo los pechos de la hembra humana habían llegado a ser hermosos? ¿No era para la gloria de la raza humana que los pechos femeninos hubiesen adquirido semejante belleza?

Y si uno se siente demasiado solo incluso para suicidarse?

Era el cuerpo de mujer lo que arrastraba al hombre a los círculos inferiores del infierno.

Pero ¿por qué una virgen es pura y otra mujer no?

You think I'm drunk and talking nonsense? I'm not. I would know she was being well taken care of, and I could go pleasantly to seed here in the mountains. It would be a fine, quiet feeling.

Quizá la juventud sea terrible para un anciano.

Her kimono stood out from her neck,and her back and shoulders were like a white fan spread under it. There was something sad about the full flesh under that white powder. It suggested a woolen cloth,and again it suggested the pelt of some animal.