Quotes from Y?ko Ogawa

I watch the people coming up from the shore road, staring at every girl with even the slightest resemblance to you, and then turning away when I realize my mistake. I perform this ritual over and over, never growing tired. I would gladly repeat my error a thousand times, two thousand times, if it means finding you, you who are wholly unique. Finally, I am at a loss to distinguish between the desire to see you as soon as possible and the pleasant prospect of waiting forever.

Matematyka jest jak gwiazdy, nie da si? wyja?ni? ich pi?kna.

Two is the only even prime.

Sometimes I wish I could describe how wonderful I feel in those few seconds from the time he spreads his arms above his head, as if trying to grab hold of something, to the instant he vanishes into the water. But I can never find the right words. Perhaps it's because he's falling through time, to a place where words can never reach.

Among the many things that made the Professor an excellent teacher was the fact that he wasn't afraid to say "we don't know".

The flash in his eyes as he was about to dive, the glint of light on his chest, the shapes of his muscles—it all aroused in me a pleasant feeling that usually lay dormant.

As I headed down the library steps, I turned back to look. The mathematics stacks were as silent and empty as ever. Apparently no one suspected the riches hidden there.

It's the young who have to break the old records. That's the way the world works

in reserve for the most important thing: the present.

Profesorul avea nevoie de pace, ceea ce nu însemna neap?rat t?cere complet?. De fapt, nu p?rea s?-l deranjeze când Radical alerga pe hol sau d?dea tare sonorul radioului. Avea nevoie de o liniÅŸte interioar? pe care s? n-o tulbure lumea de afar?.

La conciencia es un fenómeno en medio de un océano de fenómenos que escapan a su control, de manera que no creo que podamos ejercer una completa supervisión de todo lo que pasa por nuestra mente.

the sound of his voice could wash away the sour feeling in my stomach.

The supple line of his jaw and the fixed plane of his collarbone functioned together like a precisely calibrated instrument that seemed to become a separate living thing as we watched.

Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won't find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression – in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.

I can hear and smell and feel everything happening in the hotel. I can't say I have much experience or even any real desires of my own, but just by shutting myself up behind the desk, I can imagine every scene being played out by the people spending the night at the Iris. Then I erase them one by one and find a quiet place to lie down and sleep

Not simply an absence of noise, but an accumulation of layers of silence, untouched by fallen hair or mold, silence that the Professor left behind as he wandered through the numbers, silence like a clear lake hidden in the depths of the forest.

I suppose memories live here and there in the body. But they're invisible, aren't they? And no matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes is you leave it alone. If no one pays attention to it. They leave no trace, no evidence that they ever existed.

I suppose memories live here and there in the body. But they're invisible, aren't they? And no matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes if you leave it alone. If no one pays attention to it. They leave no trace, no evidence that they ever existed.

Having written this phrase, I set down my pencil. My new novel wasn't going very well. I seemed to be writing in circles, going backward, or running into dead ends, with no idea what should come next. Still, I often encountered this sort of writer's block, and I no longer took much notice of it.

Poate c?, de fapt, nu era nici un caiet al lui Dumnezeu, ci în întregul univers se aflau dou? feluri de fiinÅ£e – un num?r de fiinÅ£e special înzestrate, care puteau înÅ£elege o parte din aceast? ordine, ÅŸi noi toÅ£i ceilalÅ£i, care de-abia puteam aprecia descoperirile lor.

Memories don't just pile up - they also change over time. And sometimes they fade of their own accord.

The Professor never really seemed to care whether we figured out the right answer to a problem. He preferred our wild, desperate guesses to silence, and he was even more delighted when those guesses led to new problems that took us beyond the original one. He had a special feeling for what called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers.

And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.

I wonder how she broke the news to her husband. I don't really know what they talk about when I'm not around. In fact, I don't really understand couples at all. They seem like some sort of inexplicable gaseous body to me—a shapeless, colorless, unintelligible thing, trapped in a laboratory beaker.