The Diving Pool Quotes

“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.”
― Yoko Ogawa, 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.”
― Yoko Ogawa, 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, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“The waves of regret were gentle, but I know they would ripple on forever”
― Yōko Ogawa, 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, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“I watched him walking away, sweater over his shoulders, bag in hand, until he was no more than a tiny point in the distance. I watched, without so much as blinking, and I realized how utterly lonely I was. But all my staring couldn’t prevent that distant point from vanishing like a snowflake dissolving in the sunlight.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“The sound of time flowing between us became the sound of the water trickling quietly from the faucet until dawn.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“It was hard to know what was coming, where our lives would lead, and it made me sad to think about the future.”
― Yōko Ogawa, 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, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“Your body falling through space touches the deepest part of me.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“Formless days passed one after the other, as if swollen into an indistinguishable mass by the damp weather.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“As I traced his profile with my eyes, I realized that I could never ask anything of him again: not caresses, not protection, not warmth. He would never dive into the pool inside me, clouded as it was with the little girl’s tears. The waves of regret were gentle, but I knew they would ripple on forever.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“My desires seemed simple and terribly complicated at the same time: to gaze at Jun’s wet body and to make Rie cry. These were the only things that gave me comfort.”
― Yōko Ogawa, 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, 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, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“I needed to pretend to be myself at a younger, more innocent age, when we had stood marveling at the snow in the hall. I was sure that Jun would dive into only pure water, and I wanted his dive into me to be perfect; I wanted him to enter with no splash at all.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“It had seemed like a dream, far removed from reality, and yet there had been something amazingly vivid about the snow and being there with Jun. I remember being delighted to be alone in that special place, just the two of us; but 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, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“The flash in his eyes as he was about to dive, the glint of light on his chest, the shapes of his muscles—it all aroused in me a pleasant feeling that usually lay dormant.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“Jun’s graceful body cuts through these childish emotions to reach the deepest place inside me.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“I wonder how she broke the news to her husband. I don't really know what they talk about when I'm not around. In fact, I don't really understand couples at all. They seem like some sort of inexplicable gaseous body to me—a shapeless, colorless, unintelligible thing, trapped in a laboratory beaker.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“She had changed the subject so quickly that I completely forgot to congratulate her. But, then again, I wasn’t quite sure congratulations were appropriate for a baby who would be born to my sister and her husband. I looked up “congratulate” in the dictionary: it said, “to wish someone joy.” “That doesn’t mean much,” I muttered, tracing my finger over a line of characters that held no promise of joy themselves.”
― Yōko Ogawa, 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, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“The supple line of his jaw and the fixed plane of his collarbone functioned together like a precisely calibrated instrument that seemed to become a separate living thing as we watched.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“Do you suppose puppies pop out like peas popping out of the pod?”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“the sound of his voice could wash away the sour feeling in my stomach.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“The memories of him as a small boy and memories from my days at the dormitory seemed to bleed together like the shades in a watercolor painting”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“But even in this heat, she is still lapping up my grapefruit jam as soon as it’s done. She swallows it so quickly I’m afraid she’ll burn her mouth, and I don’t see how she can taste it at all. Her face looks sad, almost as if she were weeping, as I see it in profile, bent over the pot. The spoon flits back and forth from the pot to her mouth, and she seems to be trying to hold back the tears welling up in her eyes. This afternoon, the yard beyond her was glowing brilliant green in the sunlight. The cries of the cicadas were deafening.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“It’s peaceful eating outside by myself, looking up at the night sky. The evenings are warmer now that spring is almost here, and the air feels soft. My hands and feet pressed against the mat are dull and numb, but everything else—the crepe myrtle, the bricks lining the flower beds,”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“It’s peaceful eating outside by myself,”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

“I couldn't reach him from here even if I tried.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Diving Pool: Three Novellas