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I have a theory of my own about what the art of the novel is, and how it came into being....It happens because the storyteller's own experience...has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.

Murasaki Shikibu

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Murasaki Shikibu
Diarist
Lady-In-Waiting
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Kyōto
Lady Murasaki
Art
Moved
Happens
Novel
Writing
Theory
Heart
Emotion
Longer
Came
Storyteller
Experience
Shut
Keep
Passionate

More quotes by Murasaki Shikibu

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There is a tendency among men as well as women ... so soon as they have acquired a little knowledge of some kind, to want to display it to the best advantage.
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One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome
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There are as many sorts of women as there are women.
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Intimacy between stepchildren and stepparents is indeed proverbially difficult.
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No penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure
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People who do not get into scrapes are a great deal less interesting than those who do.
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Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.
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Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world.
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You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here for I am weary of this frail world's decay.
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The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep.
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Stepmothers in books usually behave very spitefully towards the children entrusted to them. But he was now learning by his own experience that in real life this does not always happen.
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In a certain reign there was a lady not of the first rank whom the emperor loved more than any of the others. The grand ladies with high ambitions thought her a presumptuous upstart, and lesser ladies were still more resentful. Everything she did offended someone.
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Autumn is no time to lie alone
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In few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story.
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No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.
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