Scattered All Over the Earth Quotes

“People are always saying the humanities are dead so it's strange how many conferences there are.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“This word natsukashii seemed to be made of mist, a mist I was wandering through with unsteady steps.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“You can say you want a classless society, but once you’ve boarded a big, safe ship, it’s hard to screw up the courage to switch to a dinghy.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“When you think about it, since we’re all earthlings, no one can be an illegal resident of earth. So why are there more and more illegal aliens every year? If things keep on this way, someday the whole human race will be illegal.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“You don't talk. You are silent. Have you decided not to say anything? I'm not trying to force you. I don't mean to criticize you, either. If someone asked me, 'Why do people have to talk, anyway?' I'm not sure how I would answer. But if your silence keeps on this way, don't you think it might lead to death? Imagine tens of thousands of people who never talk, living on an island. They have enough to eat and clothes to wear. They have games and porn, too. But without language, they decay and die.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“Dad never praised my cooking or complained about it, either. So I always thought cooking was like putting on your socks, say, or opening a window - nothing special. But now that I had a girlfriend I realized that if you fed a woman good food she'd be yours forever, and was kind of upset with Dad for not telling me something so important.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“I wanted to stroll around town, wrapped in loose, warm cloth.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“if you sincerely loved someone, believing him to be Norwegian, then found out one day that he'd been lying to you, and was actually Danish, would you be able to not go on loving him?”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“It must be the same for you. Living in Arles is probably like living under the sea, in the Ryügü Palace. You have exotic women to dance for you, and you get all dreamy, smelling flowers you never knew existed, and drinking in the colors of foreign roof tiles, so you never get bored, but then one day you suddenly realise you're outside the current of time, and you want to go home.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“Nevertheless, to any employee, work is to some degree a place where strangers pull at you from right, left, above and below, pinching, rubbing, and generally making a mess of you from morning to night.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“We Eskimos never hunted because we liked it; we killed only as many animals as we needed to live, then preserved the meat and ate it slowly, never wasting it, and used the skins to make our clothes and shoes,” I explained. “Then foreign fur traders came to trick us, threatening us until soon we were killing as many sea otters as we could because their fur could be sold at high prices. After many years there were no more sea otters nearby, so we started making long trips in search of new hunting grounds.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“Since I didn’t have a contract I could show him to make him stay, if Tenzo suddenly vanished I would be left with nothing. Tenzo had given me no words, not “lover,” or even “relationship.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

“Little by little I was starting to like Hiruko, which surprised me. “And are you a Buddhist?” I asked her. “No, I’m not a Buddhist. I’m a linguist.” “Is that a religion?” “Not really, but languages can make people happy, and show them what’s beyond death.”
― Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth