22 Quotes by Nahoko Uehashi

[...] worrying about what other people think really holds back the imagination.

To eat or be eaten, to escape or be taken...a matter of utmost importance to the one concerned, yet it happens all the time and we don't even notice.

But I despise the way you use the word ‘sin’ to manipulate others.” Feelings locked deep inside her suddenly rushed from her mouth as if a dam had been broken. “You use that word to paralyze the mind, just like we use the Silent Whistle to freeze the Beasts and Toda. I can’t bear to see people bind others like that.

Humans, beasts, bugs—all are but tiny pricks gleaming in the night—a herd of countless points of light, bound in the darkness of distrust.

When Elin watched the honeybees or other creatures in the wild, when she observed the diversity of their life cycles and the astounding precision of their habits, there were times when she felt herself become a prick of light in the vastness of the night sky, times when all living things, people, beasts and insects, dwindled to equal points of light twinkling in the darkness.

Sometimes we hit the wrong notes like clashing echoes. Yet sometimes, just by chance, the notes we played for one another made unexpected music, like this. Her eyes filled with tears. As long as the life you have given me continues, let me stand on the shore of that great abyss and play. Let me pluck my harp, note by note, and speak to the creatures of earth and sky, so that I may hear music as yet unknown.

But look around at this world, how perfectly it's made. Flowers can't move, yet the insects come to them and spread their pollen. Trees can't move either, but birds and animals eat their fruit and carry their seeds far and wide.

Sometimes, we hit the wrong notes like clashing echoes. Yet sometimes, just by chance, the notes we played for one another made unexpected music, like this.

A good teacher is not one who never doubts, but rather one who strives to keep on learning despite the doubts in her mind.