46 Quotes by Yōko Ogawa

The Professor never really seemed to care whether we figured out the right answer to a problem. He preferred our wild, desperate guesses to silence, and he was even more delighted when those guesses led to new problems that took us beyond the original one. He had a special feeling for what he called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers.

I wonder how she broke the news to her husband. I don't really know what they talk about when I'm not around. In fact, I don't really understand couples at all. They seem like some sort of inexplicable gaseous body to me—a shapeless, colorless, unintelligible thing, trapped in a laboratory beaker.

Because he had been- and in many ways still was- such a brilliant man, he no doubt understood the nature of his memory problem. It wasn't pride that prevented him from asking for help but a deep aversion to causing more trouble than necessary for those of us who lived in the normal world.

—Me alivia que sea la voz lo último que vaya a desaparecer —dije—. De esta forma, me veo con mayor predisposición a afrontar el instante final de la manera más tranquila y serena posible, sin tener que pasar por un calvario de dolor, sufrimiento y miseria

In the midst of a vast field of numbers, a straight path opened before my eyes.

Disappeared' is the only way to describe it-it was as if he dissolved into thin air without so much as a whimper. I wouldn't have believed that a human being with a brain, a heart, with arms and legs and the power of speech could have simple vanished like that. There was nothing about him that suggested he would disappear.

I remember hearing a saying long ago: 'Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,' " I said.

Among the many things that made the Professor an excellent teacher was the fact that he wasn't afraid to say 'we don't know.' For the Professor, there was no shame in admitting you didn't have the answer, it was a necessary step toward the truth. It was as important to teach us about the unknown or the unknowable as it was to teach us what had already been safely proven.

A heart has no shape, no limits. That's why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much.