Best 41 quotes of Yasunari Kawabata on MyQuotes

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

Along the coast the sea roars, and inland the mountains roar – the roaring at the center, like a distant clap of thunder.

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.

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

But a haiku by Buson came into his mind: 'I try to forget this senile love; a chilly autumn shower.' The gloom only grew denser.

But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it was had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence.

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.

Even if you have the wit to look by yourself in a bush away from the other children, there are not many bell crickets in the world. Probably you will find a girl like a grasshopper whom you think is a bell cricket.And finally, to your clouded, wounded heart, even a true bell cricket will seem like a grasshopper. Should that day come, when it seems to you that the world is only full of grasshoppers, I will think it a pity that you have no way to remember tonight's play of light, when your name was written in green by your beautiful lantern on a girl's breast.

From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation.

In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted into a sort of symbolic world not of this world. Particularly when a light out in the mountains shone in the center of the girl's face, Shimamura felt his chest rise at the inexpressible beauty of it.

I suppose even a woman's hatred is a kind of love.

It's remarkable how we go on year after year, doing the same old things. We get tired and bored, and ask when they'll come for us

I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business. The day you die.

Lunatics have no age. If we were crazy, you and I, we might be a great deal younger.

Maybe vagueness has been good for me. The word means two different things in Tokyo and Osaka, you know. In Tokyo it means stupidity, but in Osaka they talk about vagueness in a painting and in a game of Go.

Now, even more than the evening before, he could think of no one with whom to compare her. She had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate.

People have separated from each other with walls of concrete that blocked the roads to connection and love. and Nature has been defeated in the name of development.

Put your soul in the palm of my hand for me to look at, like a crystal jewel. I'll sketch it in words.

Seeing the moon, he becomes the moon, the moon seen by him becomes him. He sinks into nature, becomes one with nature. The light of the "clear heart" of the priest, seated in the meditation hall in the darkness before the dawn, becomes for the dawn moon its own light.

The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.

The snow on the distant mountains was soft and creamy, as if veiled in a faint smoke.

The sound of the freezing of snow over the land seemed to roar deep into the earth. There was no moon. The stars, almost too many of them to be true, came forward so brightly that it was as if they were falling with the swiftness of the void. As the stars came nearer, the sky retreated deeper and deeper into the night color. The layers of the Border Range, indistinguishable one from another, cast their heaviness at the skirt of the starry sky in a blackness grave and somber enough to communicate their mass. The whole of the night scene came together in a clear, tranquil harmony.

THE TRAIN came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.

The winter moon becomes a companion, the heart of the priest, sunk in meditation upon religion and philosophy, there in the mountain hall, is engaged in a delicate interplay and exchange with the moon; and it is this of which the poet sings.

The woman was silent, her eyes on the floor. Shimamura had come to a point where he knew he was only parading his masculine shamelessness, and yet it seemed likely enough that the woman was familiar with the failing and need not be shocked by it. He looked at her. Perhaps it was the rich lashes of the downcast eyes that made her face seem warm and sensuous. She shook her head very slightly, and again a faint blush spread over her face.

A voice so beautiful it was almost lonely, calling out as if to someone who could not hear, on ship far away.

But even more than her diary, Shimamura was surprised at her statement that she had carefully cataloged every novel and short story she had read since she was fifteen or sixteen. The record already filled ten notebooks. "You write down your criticisms, do you?" "I could never do anything like that. I just write down the author and the characters and how they are related to each other. That is about all." "But what good does it do?" "None at all." "A waste of effort." "A complete waste of effort," she answered brightly, as though the admission meant little to her. She gazed solemnly at Shimamura, however. A complete waste of effort. For some reason Shimamura wanted to stress the point. But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence.

Even if you took it as cascading snowy mountains,it was not a cool snow-white. The cold of the snow and it's warm colour made a kind of music.

He closed his eyes and the warmth sank into his head, bringing an immediate sense of life. Reality came through the violent breathing, and with a sort of nostalgic remorse. He felt as though he was waiting tranquilly for some undefined revenge.

Be quick as another may be waiting

In the moonlight the fine geishalike skin took on the luster of a seashell.

Secondo mio marito non esiste femmina più fortunata della donna. Me lo ripete spesso. Dice che soltanto la femmina umana possiede un aspetto e una voce più armoniosi del maschio. Nel mondo animale sono i maschi ad esercitare il loro fascino: si pensi alle danze nuziali dei ragni e dei tacchini, al canto dei grilli e dei canarini, alla vistosa bellezza dei pavoni, al profumo del gatto muschiato: la donna è l'unica femmina più attraente del maschio, e oltretutto assomma tutti i modelli di seduzione degli animali. Il maschio biologicamente è sfavorito, È in virtù della prole che la femmina dell'animale può considerarsi superiore al maschio. La natura protegge le madri.

Los viejos tienen la muerte, y los jóvenes el amor, y la muerte viene una sola vez y el amor muchas.

Now that he was near her, this sighing of the human skin took on a dreamlike quality like the spell of the mountains.

„Oglinda și nălucile din ea se mișcau una-ntr-alta, ca într-un film. Personajele nu aveau legătură cu decorul. Purtau în ele o transparență fugară, într-un peisaj care era doar o întunecare încețoșată de seară. Ambele, topite și amestecate, schițau o lume părelnică de umbre. Atunci luci în ochiul fetei o luminiță venită de departe, din câmpie, iar Shimamura se înfioră de atâta frumusețe […] se pomeni gândind în sinea lui că perindarea priveliștilor din oglindă și fluviul timpului care curgea pe lângă el erau lucruri foarte asemănătoare”.

Supongo que en una mujer, hasta el odio es una forma del amor.

Tengo costumbre de ponerme a escribir en el diario antes de acostarme, cuando vuelvo a casa, y a veces me quedo dormida escribiendo. Releyendo el diario es fácil adivinar los puntos en que me dormí… También dejo pasar días enteros sin anotar nada. Y esto no está bien. Ocurre que aquí, en la montaña, la salidas son siempre bastante parecidas. Una no sabe qué decir. Pero este año, en cambio, me procuré un cuaderno con una página destinada a cada día, y cometí un error. Basta que me ponga a escribir para no poder detenerme. País de nieve, Yasunari Kawabata

The notes went out crystalline into the clean winter morning, to sound on the far, snowy peaks.

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

Why had God created man's face so that he might not see it himself? 'Suppose you could see your own face, would you lose your mind? Would you become incapable of acting?' Most probably man had evolved in such a way that he could not see his own face. Maybe dragonflies and praying mantises could see their own faces.

Your ears are lovely , he said, but there's a kind of eerie beauty to your profile.