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but sometimes, before I even realise what’s going on, there I am – naked and defenceless and utterly confused.
in real life people are like that. It’s not so easy to make choices on your own.”
People soon get tired of things that aren’t boring, but not of what is boring.
I might have the leisure to be bored, but not to grow tired of something.
“But solitude comes in different varieties. What’s waiting for you might be a little unexpected.”
never ask the impossible. That’s a colossal waste of time, don’t you agree?”
It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It’s just as Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibility. Turn this on its head and you could say that where there’s no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise. Just as we see with Eichmann.
Like someone excitedly relating a story only to find the words petering out, the path gets narrower the further I go,
Cream and Duke Ellington
“Crossroads”
the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing.
the large drops strike me on the cheeks, the eyelids, chest, side, penis, legs and bottom – the stinging pain like a religious initiation or something. Along with the pain there’s a feeling of closeness, as though for once in my life the world’s treating me fairly. I feel elated, as if all of a sudden I’ve been set free. I face the sky, hands held wide apart, open my mouth wide and gulp down the falling rain.
“Little Red Corvette”,
Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.
First you fear me. Then you hate me. And finally you kill me.”
There has to be pain. That’s the rule.
“You can’t look too far ahead. Do that and you’ll lose sight of what you’re doing and stumble. I’m
‘No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.’
Just a few steps is all it takes for everything associated with it to lose all sense of reality.
when someone is trying very hard to get something, they don’t. And when they’re running away from something as hard as they can, it usually catches up with them.
Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.”
might be good for us to try being apart like this,’
‘then we can really tell how much we mean to each other.’
There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s as Tolstoy said: happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.
“I’ve experienced all kinds of discrimination,” Oshima says. “Only people who’ve been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I’m as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls ‘hollow men’. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they’re doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don’t want to.
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necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn’t play a role shouldn’t exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That’s what you call dramaturgy. Logic, morals or meaning don’t have anything to do with it. It’s all a question of relationality.
“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back
because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. Our lives are just shadows of that guiding principle.
Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all.’”
Loving somebody, wanting them more than anything – it’s all a new experience. The same with having somebody want me.”
“No, it’s fine. Music doesn’t bother me. To me it’s like the wind.”
“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
“Can nothingness increase?” Hoshino puzzled this one over for a while. “That’s a tough one,” he admitted. “If something returns to nothing it becomes zero, but even if you add zero to zero, it’s still zero.”
“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads – at least that’s where I imagine it – there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live for ever in your own private library.”
