Yasunari Kawabata Quotes

We have been exceedingly busy ever since you went away. In the first place we have had to rejoice two or three times everyday at your having such very delightful weather for the whole of your journey...

I think we need some new Christmas carols with a more modern approach. Of course, I wouldn't abandon the religious theme completely. How about "Holy Christ, the Christmas Tree's on Fire"? Or "Jesus, Can You Believe It's Christmas Again?" This ought to get the ball rolling; I'm hoping you people will take it from here.

Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.

But look — he flicks his hand to the back of his neck. For such gesture one falls hopelessly in love for a lifetime.

Losing him was blue like I’d never known;
Missing him was dark grey all alone.
Forgetting him was like trying to know
Somebody you've never met.
But loving him was red;
Loving him was red.

Lata was beyond words. She was a miracle that will never happen never again.

I wasn’t astonished by Europe and I was never that impressed by the speed and grandeur of modern America

A fixed mindset, creates a tendency to avoid challenges, to ignore useful negative feedback and leads such people to plateau early and not achieve their full potential.

Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.

Writings such as commentaries and annotations exist to assist people in becoming sages, but in fact they close the doors to sagehood.

In all things I yearn for the past. Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased. I find that even among the splendid pieces of furniture built by our master cabinetmakers, those in the old forms are the most pleasing.

We still have a long way to go—or as I have written so many times, and said at the end of hundreds of speeches: We are just at the beginning. A glorious future!

Lata was beyond words. She was a miracle that will happen never again.

Such an insinuation is in conformity with [Irfan] Habib's pattern of thinking and writing. He is a patently biased historian.

A Dream of Red Mansions

To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.