Yōko Ogawa · 164 pages
Rating: (3.3K votes)
“Still, being alone doesn't mean you have to be miserable. In that sense it's different from losing something. You've still got yourself, even if you lose everything else. You've got to have faith in yourself and not get down just because you're on your own.”
― Yōko Ogawa, quote from The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
“When we grow up, we find ways to hide our anxieties, our loneliness, our fear and sorrow. But children hide nothing, putting everything into their tears, which they spread liberally about for the whole world to see.”
― Yōko Ogawa, quote from The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
“I was always watching you." This could have been a breathless declaration of love or a final farewell.”
― Yōko Ogawa, quote from The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
“I'm sure it must have been even more wonderful then, when we were young and knew nothing about the pain of growing up.”
― Yōko Ogawa, quote from The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
“I knew immediately that it was different from other photographs.
The night sky in the background was pure and black, so dark it made you dizzy if you stared at it too long. The rain drifted through the frame like a gentle mist, but right in the middle was a hollow area in the shape of a lima been.”
― Yōko Ogawa, quote from The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
“I couldn't reach him from here even if I tried.”
― Yōko Ogawa, quote from The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
“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.”
― Yōko Ogawa, quote from The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
“Your body falling through space touches the deepest part of me.”
― Yōko Ogawa, quote from The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
“Sometimes I wish I could describe how wonderful I feel in those few seconds from the time he spreads his arms above his head, as if trying to grab hold of something, to the instant he vanishes into the water. But I can never find the right words. Perhaps it’s because he’s falling through time, to a place where words can never reach.”
― Yōko Ogawa, quote from The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
“Since that time, I've had many similar moments, and I can never hear the words "family" and "home" without feeling that they sound strange, never simply hear them and let them go. When I stop to examine them, though, the words seem hollow, seem to rattle at my feet like empty cans.”
― Yōko Ogawa, quote from The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
Yōko Ogawa
Born place: in Okayama, Japan
Born date March 30, 1962
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“I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgement. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden, and the family have to change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
“We don't belong anywhere, because we can belong everywhere.”
― Kirsty Logan, quote from The Gracekeepers
“I’m sorry, Starflight,” she’d said, and he’d known right away what she was talking about. “I know,” he’d answered, turning his head away from her. “I just — I love you. But —” “Like a brother.” She’d hesitated, then said instead, “Not like Fatespeaker loves you.” He’d folded his wings over his face and coughed, embarrassed. “It’s all right if you love her, too,” Sunny said. “You should. She’s … she cares about you. And she’s hilarious.” He”
― Tui T. Sutherland, quote from The Brightest Night
“Sam - I liked you from the first moment I met you! I made you invite me to your house for a study group, even though - you know what - I'm pretty good at studying on my own! When I went away, you were the only person I wanted to talk to! You were the first person I needed to see when I got back! I sang in front of you, and I've never let anyone see that part of me before! You are the person... I feel like I've run halfway around the world to find! I thought that was pretty obvious! Apart from throwing myself naked at you while holding a giant sign that says, Samuel, I am completely in love with you too, I don't know what else to do!”
― Melissa Keil, quote from Life in Outer Space
“So when I watch trains, it makes me think about how much movement there is in the world. How every train has dozens of cars and every car has hundreds of parts, and all those parts and cars work day after day. And then there are all these other motions. People are born and die. Seasons change. Rivers flow to the sea. Earth circles the sun and the moon circles Earth. Everything whirring and spinning toward something. And I get to be part of it for a little while, the way I get to watch a train for a minute or two, and then it's gone.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
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