Quotes from Paprika

Yasutaka Tsutsui ·  350 pages

Rating: (1.9K votes)


“Dont you think dreams and the Internet are similar? They are both areas where the repressed conscious mind vents.”
― Yasutaka Tsutsui, quote from Paprika


“Asmodai, the demon of wrath and destruction. Master of all malevolent deities and governor of hellish legions, a monster with the three heads of a bull, a ram, and a man, the tail of a serpent, and the webbed feet of a goose. The monster sat astride an infernal dragon and held a lance bearing the war standard of hell. The three heads simultaneously breathed fire from their mouths while they surveyed the room. A television cameraman engulfed in flames ran screaming toward the window.”
― Yasutaka Tsutsui, quote from Paprika


“The officers entered the Clinic with Noda. Passing through the mouth-like lobby, they proceeded along endlessly winding corridors and stairways lit only by red night lights, like a journey through the innards of a body, before at last finding themselves on the fourth floor. Yamaji’s research had already told them that Inui lived on the fourth floor, but it would have been too dangerous to use the elevator. Elevators commonly appear in dreams as symbols of sexual desires. As such, they thought it highly probable that the elevator would be used for an attack from the subconscious.”
― Yasutaka Tsutsui, quote from Paprika


“His eyes were like black obsidian holes that threatened to suck everything in. Hypnotized, Atsuko couldn’t help being drawn down to his face. “Ah. You poor thing. You poor thing.”
― Yasutaka Tsutsui, quote from Paprika


“themselves. They work towards unattainable goals and assume too much responsibility. They try to perform several tasks correctly and to the same high standard. When told that their expectations are too high, they reply that they wouldn’t be doing their job properly if they didn’t meet those expectations. And since they’ve convinced themselves that they should be able to meet them, their ears are closed to advice.”
― Yasutaka Tsutsui, quote from Paprika



“Inui’s insane laughter filled the sanctuary. The ceiling peeled off and shards of stained glass danced through the air. They turned into dead rats, German dictionaries, wineglasses, fountain pens, scorpions, cats’ heads, syringes, and a motley jumble of other objects that filled the space, flying around madly, swirling like a whirlwind, surging like a raging sea.”
― Yasutaka Tsutsui, quote from Paprika


“As he sat at his desk in his comfortable office armchair, he allowed his body to sink into a creeping state of drowsiness, and for a few moments enjoyed the sensation of dozing off. It was a sensation akin to numbness, as if his hands and feet were melting away.”
― Yasutaka Tsutsui, quote from Paprika


About the author

Yasutaka Tsutsui
Born place: in Osaka, Japan
Born date September 24, 1934
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Popular quotes

“Death is not the end. It is a midway state.”
― Darren Shan, quote from The Thin Executioner


“For the word is quick and powerful
Sharper than any two-edged sword
Piercing even to the dividing asunder
Of soul and spirit
Of joints and marrow
It is a discerner of the thoughts
And intents of the heart”
― Amy Harmon, quote from The Bird and the Sword


“Yatima found verself gazing at a red-tinged cluster of pulsing organic parts, a translucent confusion of fluids and tissue. Sections divided, dissolved, reorganised. It looked like a flesher embryo – though not quite a realist portrait. The imaging technique kept changing, revealing different structures: Yatima saw hints of delicate limbs and organs caught in slices of transmitted dark; a stark silhouette of bones in an X-ray flash; the finely branched network of the nervous system bursting into view as a filigreed shadow, shrinking from myelin to lipids to a scatter of vesicled neurotransmitters against a radio-frequency MRI chirp.

There were two bodies now. Twins? One was larger, though – sometimes much larger. The two kept changing places, twisting around each other, shrinking or growing in stroboscopic leaps while the wavelengths of the image stuttered across the spectrum.

One flesher child was turning into a creature of glass, nerves and blood vessels vitrifying into optical fibres. A sudden, startling white-light image showed living, breathing Siamese twins, impossibly transected to expose raw pink and grey muscles working side by side with shape-memory alloys and piezoelectric actuators, flesher and gleisner anatomies interpenetrating. The scene spun and morphed into a lone robot child in a flesher's womb; spun again to show a luminous map of a citizen's mind embedded in the same woman's brain; zoomed out to place her, curled, in a cocoon of optical and electronic cables. Then a swarm of nanomachines burst through her skin, and everything scattered into a cloud of grey dust.

Two flesher children walked side by side, hand in hand. Or father and son, gleisner and flesher, citizen and gleisner... Yatima gave up trying to pin them down, and let the impressions flow through ver. The figures strode calmly along a city's main street, while towers rose and crumbled around them, jungle and desert advanced and retreated.

The artwork, unbidden, sent Yatima's viewpoint wheeling around the figures. Ve saw them exchanging glances, touches, kisses – and blows, awkwardly, their right arms fused at the wrists. Making peace and melting together. The smaller lifting the larger on to vis shoulders – then the passenger's height flowing down to the bearer like an hourglass's sand.”
― Greg Egan, quote from Diaspora


“Dana, I appreciate your concern for me," he said. "But the truth is, you were hurt far more than I was." ... "Let me do this one small thing to help atone for having been used as a weapon against you. Please. ”
― Jenna Black, quote from Glimmerglass


“She'd been told time and again that it was rude stare, but she didn't obey her mother's rule now. The giant mesmerized her and she wanted to remember everything she could about him.

He must have felt her staring at him, though because he suddenly turned and looked directly her.

Brenna decided to make her papa proud of her and behave like a proper young lady. She grabbed a fistful of her skirt, hiked it up to her knees, and bent down to curtsy. She promptly lost her balance and almost hit her head against the floor, but she was quick enough to lean back so she could land on her
bottom.

She stood back up, remembered to let go of her skirts, and peeked up at the stranger to see what he thought about her newly acquired skill.

The giant smiled at her.

As soon as he looked away, she squeezed herself up against Rachel's backside again.

"I'm going to marry him," she whispered.”
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