“كل ما لديه حقاً كان شعوراً جارفاً بالحماقة وبالابتذال, وقد ذاب متحولاً إلى رتابة. كم هي هائلة تجليات العادي والمبتذل! ابتذال التأنق, ابتذال العاج, ابتذال القداسة, ابتذال الجنون, ابتذال ذوي المعرفة الواسعة, ابتذال الأكاديمي المدعي, الابتذال المغناج, ابتذال القطة الفارسية, ابتذال الملوك والشحاذين والمعتوهين والفراشات.”
“كان الاضطرار إلى الحياة أكثر سواداً من أشد ضروب السواد افتقاراً للمرح, أن يضطر كل يوم لرؤية رجل يسعى لفهم أعمق شيء بداخله, وينجح في ذلك.”
“History knew the truth. History was the most inhuman product of humanity.It scooped up the whole of human will and, like the goddess Kali in Calcutta, dripped blood from its mouth as it bit and crunched.”
“The perfectly ordinary girl and the great philosopher are alike: for both, the smallest triviality can become the vision that wipes out the world.”
“There is nothing in the least special about you. I guarantee you a long life. You have not been chosen by the gods, you will never be at one with your acts, you do not have in you the green light to flash like young lightning with the speed of the gods and destroy yourself. All you have is a certain premature senility. Your life will be suited for coupon-clipping. Nothing more.”
“No, Mr. Honda, I have forgotten none of the blessings that were mine in the other world. But I fear I have never heard the name Kiyoaki Matsugae. Don’t you suppose, Mr. Honda, that there never was such a person? You seem convinced that there was; but don’t you suppose that there was no such person from the beginning, anywhere? I couldn’t help thinking so as I listened to you.”
“Why then do we know each other? And the Ayakuras and the Matsugaes must still have family registers.”
“Yes, such documents might solve problems in the other world. But did you really know a person called Kiyoaki? And can you say definitely that the two of us have met before?”
“I came here sixty years ago.”
“Memory is like a phantom mirror. It sometimes shows things too distant to be seen, and sometimes it shows them as if they were here.”
“But if there was no Kiyoaki from the beginning—” Honda was groping through a fog. His meeting here with the Abbess seemed half a dream. He spoke loudly, as if to retrieve the self that receded like traces of breath vanishing from a lacquer tray. “If there was no Kiyoaki, then there was no Isao. There was no Ying Chan, and who knows, perhaps there has been no I.”
For the first time there was strength in her eyes.
“That too is as it is in each heart.”
“.... كل ما هنالك ان احداً لم يلحظ الأمر، فنحن أكثر تعوداً مما ينبغي .على عبث الوجود. و ضياع كون ليس جديراً ان يحمل على محمل الجد”
“He was in a room of the Gesshuuji, which he had thought it would be impossible to visit. The approach of death had made the visit easy, had unloosed the weight that held him in the depths of being. It was even a comfort to think, from the light repose the struggle up the hill had brought him, that Kiyoaki, struggling against illness up that same road, had been given wings to soar with by the denial that awaited him.”
“He integrado una delicada maquinaria para averiguar lo que sentiría de ser humano.”
“go-go hall on my way home from school.”
“SUCCESS does not mean an absence of problems, it is overcoming problems. Success is not measured by how high we go up in life, but how many times we bounce back when we fall down.”
“I may have absolutely no control over what happens to us, but we can control how we respond. If we choose the right attitude, we can rise above whatever challenges we face.”
“The most crucial truths are always rejected before they're accepted. " he says gazing out of space."It's one of our greatest human flaws: arrogance. We look up and dare to assume we know, when the universe is unknowable.”
“I have motherfucking finesse. Just because I speak my mind means I'm not tactful?”
“My first meeting with you only confirmed what I first suspected. You are a fraud, a charlatan and a shyster. My favourite kind of person, in fact.”
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