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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

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Yasunari Kawabata
Age: 72 †
Born: 1899
Born: June 11
Died: 1972
Died: April 16
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Ōsaka
Philosophy
Delicate
Sunk
Upon
Engaged
Sings
Religion
Winter
Priest
Heart
Mountain
Hall
Moon
Exchange
Meditation
Halls
Poet
Priests
Becomes
Companion
Interplay

More quotes by Yasunari Kawabata

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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.
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A secret, if it's kept, can be sweet and comforting, but once it leaks out it can turn on you with a vengeance.
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The labor into which a heart has poured its whole love--where will it have its say, to excite and inspire, and when?
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I suppose even a woman's hatred is a kind of love.
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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
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Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?’ ‘You sometimes even feel sentimental for it.
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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.
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A child walked by, rolling a metal hoop that made a sound of autumn.
Yasunari Kawabata
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THE TRAIN came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.
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Along the coast the sea roars, and inland the mountains roar – the roaring at the center, like a distant clap of thunder.
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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
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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
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Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings every human being flows through time in a different way.
Yasunari Kawabata
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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
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Our language is primarily for expressing human goodness and beauty.
Yasunari Kawabata
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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
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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
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The snow on the distant mountains was soft and creamy, as if veiled in a faint smoke.
Yasunari Kawabata
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Put your soul in the palm of my hand for me to look at, like a crystal jewel. I'll sketch it in words.
Yasunari Kawabata
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And I can't complain. After all, only women are able really to love.
Yasunari Kawabata