One Thousand Summers

What matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. When you do that, it is always the first time and the last.  ― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

“Poets give us insights into our world. Great poets give us insights into human life.”   — Kenneth Yasuda in the foreword to H. Jay Harris’ translation of The Tales of Ise

'Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?'  'You sometimes even feel sentimental for it.'  ― Yasunari Kawabata,  Thousand Cranes

And isn’t it better really to leave things only hinted at?  — Junichiro Tanizaki, Some Prefer Nettles

I am nothing. You are right. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything. − Haruki Murakami,  1Q84

"You've always been fond of understanding people too well."      "They should arrange not to be understood quite so easily." ― Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes

Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context. − Haruki Murakami,  A Wild Sheep Chase

"In autumn, the evening - the blazing sun has sunk very close to the mountain rim, and now even the crows, in threes and fours or twos and threes, hurrying to their roost, are a moving sight." From Sei Shonagon's "The Pillow Book". Chapter I. In spring, the dawn. .. Translation by Meredith McKinney, Penguin Classics, 2006

In poetry there are no teachers. One makes antiquity one’s teacher. Provided he steep his mind in the styles of antiquity and learn his diction from the great poets of old, who can fail to compose good poetry?   − Fujiwara no Teika, Eiga no taigai  詠歌大概 ( Essentials of Poetic Composition)  As quoted in Conversations with Shōtetsu , translated by Robert Brower

If I didn't hold her tight, I felt, she would fly off into pieces. — Haruki Murakami,  South of the Border, West of the Sun