Quotes from Y?ko Tawada

This life with his grandson was about all he could manage. And for that he needed to be flexible, in mind and body, with the courage to doubt what he had believed for over a century.

She got off at the train station, the final stop, but in the station saw neither signs nor people. She sat on a cold bench in the waiting room, listening. She was starting to wonder if this was really a station. Based on experience she'd assumed as much, but you couldn't count on things being the way they'd always been. Perhaps this was no longer a station, and she simply hadn't heard the news.

Now he longer felt any need to use taste as the bricks and mortar for a structure called "individuality

Now he no longer felt any need to use taste as the bricks and mortar for a structure called "individuality.

Within my roasting brain cells, the scraps of thought refused to cohere.

Unable to turn back the clock, they let themselves be turned.

Writing isn't particularly different from hibernation. Perhaps I made a drowsy impression, but in the bear's den of my brain, I was giving birth to my own childhood and secretly attending to its upbringing.

Meine Weltkugel war bestimmt nicht rund gewesen, sondern wie ein Abendhimmel, in dem die fremden Orte wie Feuerwerk blitzten.

Time passed, and I kept getting lost in the pages of my appointment book, which had been attacked by a mildew of obligations.

Nothing is more frightening than a law that has never been enforced. When the authorities want to throw someone in jail, all they have to do is suddenly arrest him for breaking a law that no one has bothered to obey yet.

Nevertheless, to any employee, work is to some degree a place where strangers pull at you from left, right, above, and below, pinching, rubbing, and generally making a mess of you from morning to night.

Since I didn't have a contract I could show him to make him stay, if Tenzo suddenly vanished I would be left with nothing. Tenzo had given me no words, not "lover," or even "relationship.

Sarashina Nikki

She's always hated good-byes and as she got older she hated them even more.

This visit by these two men made my pen go limp.

If human beings want to possess human rights, they have to give animals animal rights. But how do I justify the fact that yesterday I ate meat? I lack the courage to think this thought through to the end.

The male members of the species Homo sapiens appealed to me a great deal. They were soft and small and had fragile but adorable teeth. Their fingers were delicately constructed, the fingernails all but nonexistent. Sometimes they reminded me of stuffed animals, lovely to hold in one's arms.

Man sagte mir, die Welt sei vernetzt, die Entfernung spiele keine Rolle mehr. Es schien mir aber so, als ob nicht die Entfernung, sondern die Nähe keine Rolle mehr spiele. Auch jemanden, der nebenan sitzt, kann man eine E-Mail schicken. Ist die Welt wirklich vernetzt oder ist sie vielleicht verletzt?

People are always saying the humanities are dead so it's strange how many conferences there are.

Why do panda bears bore you?" "Since they're born wearing such impressive makeup, they don't make any effort to be interesting. They neither master any stageworthy tricks nor write autobiographies.

Writing an autobiography means guessing or making up everything you've forgotten. I thought I'd already sufficiently described the character Ivan. In reality, I could no longer even remember him. Or rather: I was starting to remember him all too clearly, which could only mean this Ivan was now nothing more than my creation.

I think hunting used to be important for human survival. THat's no longer the case, but they can't stop. A human being, perhaps, is made of many nonsensical movements. But they've forgotten the movements necessary for life. These humans are manipulated by what remains of their memories.

Poison often had no taste at all, so no matter how finely honed your palate, your taste buds weren't going to save your life.

Locked in my invisible cage, I am living proof of human rights violations, and I'm not even human