Quote

A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned.

Yasunari Kawabata

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Yasunari Kawabata
Age: 72 †
Born: 1899
Born: June 11
Died: 1972
Died: April 16
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Ōsaka
Dogs
Cancer
Dog
Sleepless
Offers
Toads
Died
Drowned
Black
Corpses
Night
Nights
Young
Poems

More quotes by Yasunari Kawabata

Image
Maybe vagueness has been good for me. The word means two different things in Tokyo and Osaka, you know. In Tokyo it means stupidity, but in Osaka they talk about vagueness in a painting and in a game of Go.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
A child walked by, rolling a metal hoop that made a sound of autumn.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
The winter moon becomes a companion, the heart of the priest, sunk in meditation upon religion and philosophy, there in the mountain hall, is engaged in a delicate interplay and exchange with the moon and it is this of which the poet sings.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
It's remarkable how we go on year after year, doing the same old things. We get tired and bored, and ask when they'll come for us
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
The snow on the distant mountains was soft and creamy, as if veiled in a faint smoke.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?’ ‘You sometimes even feel sentimental for it.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it was had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
Along the coast the sea roars, and inland the mountains roar – the roaring at the center, like a distant clap of thunder.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
And I can't complain. After all, only women are able really to love.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
Our language is primarily for expressing human goodness and beauty.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
But a haiku by Buson came into his mind: 'I try to forget this senile love a chilly autumn shower.' The gloom only grew denser.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
Lunatics have no age. If we were crazy, you and I, we might be a great deal younger.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
Now, even more than the evening before, he could think of no one with whom to compare her. She had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
People have separated from each other with walls of concrete that blocked the roads to connection and love. and Nature has been defeated in the name of development.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
They were words that came out of nothing, but they seemed to him somehow significant. He muttered them over again.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
Seeing the moon, he becomes the moon, the moon seen by him becomes him. He sinks into nature, becomes one with nature. The light of the clear heart of the priest, seated in the meditation hall in the darkness before the dawn, becomes for the dawn moon its own light.
Yasunari Kawabata
Image
I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business. The day you die.
Yasunari Kawabata