Crane Origami Quotes

Jason: I'm all for hobbies, but you think this is the time for origami? Whatcha making, a crane?

Your mother is in the bedside chair. She is wearing a dress printed with strawberries and birds. Using a long needle, she is stringing brightly colored origami cranes into garlands. You know what she's doing: It's a Japanese custom called senbazuru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health. Though you cannot see him, you become aware of the fact that your father is sitting on the floor. He is folding cranes so that your mother can string them. This is marriage.

Your mother is in the bedside chair. She is wearing a dress printed with strawberries and birds. Using a long needle, she is stringing brightly origami cranes into garlands. It's a Japanese custom called senbazaru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health.

Our Kind Dictator rarely dictated Himself, as word-clumsy as ever, sentences like origami as His thoughts as vast as cosmic planes compress fold on fold, tighter, tighter, into the deceptive smallness of a crane, or frog, or noun.

Awe empowers sacrifice, and inspires us to give that most precious of resources, time. Memphis University professor Jia Wei Zhang and I brought people to a lab where they were surrounded by either awe-inspiring plants or less-inspiring ones. As participants were leaving the lab, we asked if they would fold origami cranes to be sent to victims of the 2011 tsunami in Japan. Being surrounded with awe-inspiring plants led people to volunteer more time. The last pillar of the default self—striving for competitive advantage, registered in a stinginess toward giving away possessions and time—crumbles during awe. Awe awakens the better angels of our nature.

I know I’m supposed to be so smart, but guess what? I don’t remember any of it! And double-guess what? I’m totally fine now, and have been for nine and a half years. Just take a time-out and ponder that. For two-thirds of my life I’ve been totally normal. Mom and Dad bring me back to Children’s every year for an echocardiogram and X rays that even the cardiologist rolls her eyes at because I don’t need them. Walking through the halls, Mom is always, like, having a Vietnam flashback. We’ll pass some random piece of art hanging on the wall and she’ll grab onto a chair and say, Oh, God, that Milton Avery poster. Or, gulping a big breath, That ficus tree had origami cranes hanging on it that awful Christmas. And then she’ll close her eyes while everyone just stands there, and Dad hugs her really tight, tears flooding his eyes, too.

At some point, we reach a place in life when we’re sure there will be no more surprises. The timing is different for everyone, but the feeling — a settling, a resignation — is the same. We know everyone we’re going to know. We may encounter new clients or neighbors, the kinds of people who come and go, the kind that don’t last. But eventually, we come to understand that the old flame is not going to return decades later, that no one truly revolutionary is going to cross our paths. Our people are our people. And when we reach that point, we inherently grasp that no one new will change us. No one will shake the foundation of our identity or imperil our most cherished relationships. No one will force us to make unthinkable choices. No one will crease a comfortable life and fold it into a wholly new shape, like an origami crane.   And then someone does.

Origami Her heart is an origami, a secret rose garden of crimps and creases, a sentient paper crane whose petals make head and tail of complex emotion. She ripples at my touch like gentle rain unfolding into a geometry of diamonds and ripples again from the reverse side like a fish nibbling at the water’s surface answering the query of the rain drops with a deeper question.

...I thought maybe heaven wasn't only in the great big sky with comfy furniture and fireplaces. I figured it lived in small places too, like a bowl of good soup or the folds of an origami crane" -Grace

Mas had seen photographs and video footage of the skeletal remains of the Atomic Bomb Dome, the building that miraculously survived the blast, and of the Sadako monument, her arms stretched out, holding a giant origami crane above her head. All of these memorials had been either preserved or produced after his time. They were for future generations, the ones who hadn't experienced what could happen in a split second. Giant waves and the shaking of the ground could still destroy cities, but that was at the hands of Mother Nature. It was entirely different when the engine of destruction was human— different because it calculated and planned for reasons both good and evil. But when that power was unleashed, who would it touch? It touched them all—the highest of the high and the lowest of the low. And even more frightening, it sent out a sickness that polluted your body, mind, and soul, and maybe also the generations to come.

But the paneled room folded itself through a dozen impossible angles, tumbling away into cyberspace like an origami crane.

Did the people in the difficult condition, who, by definition, had to work harder, value their unfortunate creations more than those who more easily and successfully turned out decent-looking cranes and frogs? And how did those who struggled with the difficult set of instructions but managed to complete the task compare with those who worked hard at it but didn’t succeed? We found that those who successfully completed their origami in the difficult condition valued their work the most, much more than those in the easy condition. In contrast, those in the difficult condition who did not manage to finish their work valued their results the least, much less than those in the easy condition. These results imply that investing more effort does,

So, it turns out I’m kind of dying,” I say to her. I haven’t spoken this directly to anyone yet. “Yeah,” she says. “So, what’s up with that? Why do you always have to be the first of us to do everything?” “Can you teach me how to make origami cranes?” I say. “I thought you would never ask,” she says.

I began to see all of this, and the beauty of clinging to one another, and my life was a sheet of paper being folded into an origami crane and I was beginning to believe I could fly.