The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories Quotes

“The bones came jumbled together from the kitchen... there was no way of telling my parents from my Brothers and Sisters. I put them all in the same urn. Sometimes, late at night, I hold them in my hands and cry.”
― Jay Rubin, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

“Sorrow never heals. We simply take comfort in the fact that our pain seems to fade.”
― Jay Rubin, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

“In 1970, nine years after he wrote ‘Patriotism’, Mishima died committing seppuku in a patriotic act of grieving for the fate of his nation. I was twenty-one years old at the time, watching the surrounding events on television in the university dining hall and wondering what I was seeing. Even after it finally dawned on me what this was about, I was unable to discover any urgent ‘meaning’ in Mishima’s act. If it taught me anything, it was that there existed a huge gulf between bringing an idea to a literary apotheosis and doing it as an act in the real world.”
― Jay Rubin, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

“figures”
― Jay Rubin, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

“According to the news, when you boiled water its concentration of radioactive particles increased. Starting tomorrow, I’d stop breastfeeding and give the baby formula made with tap water.”
― Jay Rubin, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

“I lived in an apartment with my husband, and with this blob that could only be called a baby,”
― Jay Rubin, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

“I’m from the New Electro Company,’ Zame mutters. ‘Buy this electric spider.”
― Jay Rubin, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories