90 Quotes by Yasunari Kawabata

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.

Was this the bright vastness the poet Bashō saw when he wrote of the Milky Way arched over a stormy sea?

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.

We were watching a battle, but it took clean forms.

A child walked by, rolling a metal hoop that made a sound of autumn.

إذا اتفق ونمت نوماً أبدياً فلن أتذمر ص 96

بما أن قرف العيش لا يرهقه هذه الليلة ولا الوحدة ولا الشيخوخة، فقد عزّ عليه أن ينام ص 94

The labor into which a heart has poured its whole love--where will it have its say, to excite and inspire, and when?

A secret, if it’s kept, can be sweet and comforting, but once it leaks out it can turn on you with a vengeance.