Mieko Kawakami Quotes

But I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I guess I was crying because we had nowhere else to go, no choice but to go on living in this world. Crying because we had no other world to choose, and crying at everything before us, everything around us.

Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty.

Because we’re always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.

Listen, if there is a hell, we're in it. And if there's a heaven, we're already there. This is it.

Why does the night have to be so beautiful? As I walk through the night, I remember what Mitsutsuka said to me. “Because at night, only half the world remains.

I was so scared of being hurt that I'd done nothing. I was so scared of failing, of being hurt, that I choose nothing. I did nothing.

Without love and trust, resentment is the only thing that’s left.

The light at night is special because the overwhelming light of day has left us, and the remaining half draws on everything it has to keep the world around us bright.

her voice was amazing, like a 6B pencil

Memory's funny, isn't it? We remember some things out of nowhere, but so much of what happens, we never think about again.

If you want to know how poor somebody was growing up, ask them how many windows they had. Don't ask what was in their fridge or in their closet. The number of windows says it all. It says everything. If they had none, or maybe one or two, that's all you need to know.

People like pretty things. When you’re pretty, everybody wants to look at you, they want to touch you. I wanted that for myself. Prettiness means value. But some people never experience that personally.

When I start to feel emotional about something, I can't tell if I'm actually feeling that way. What if it's just something somebody wrote in a book? Or maybe a line or a performance from some movie... Either way, I get this feeling like I'm quoting somebody else's work.

We’re all so small, and have such little time, unable to envision the majority of the world.

Well, we use words to communicate, right? Still, most of our words don’t actually get across. You know what I mean? Well, our words might, but not what we’re actually trying to say. That’s what we’re always dealing with. We live in this place, in this world, where we can share our words but not our thoughts.

My life was life a dusty shelf in a old bookstore, where every volume was exactly where it had been for ages, the only discernible change being that my body has aged another ten ages.

If you make plenty of money but don't have any kids, you might get called successful. But unless you have kids, no one will ever call you a great woman.

My monolithic expectation of what a woman’s body was supposed to look like had no bearing on what actually happened to my body. The two things were wholly unrelated. I never became the woman I imagined. And what was I expecting?

I thought about the books that I had looked through in the bookstore. It occurred to me that they were full of things that people wanted to say to other people, or things people wanted somebody to say to them.

It feels like I’m trapped inside my body. It decides when I get hungry, and when I’ll get my period. From birth to death, you have to keep eating and making money just to stay alive.

I became unsure of how to leave the mirror, how to leave the me in the mirror behind.

People are willing to accept the pain and suffering of others, limitless amounts of it, as long as it helps them to keep on believing in whatever it is that they want to believe. Love, meaning, doesn’t matter.

Without school, I could get by without seeing anyone or being seen by anyone. It was like being a piece of furniture in a room that nobody uses. I can't express how safe it felt never being seen.

I’d been on my own for ages, and I was convinced that there was no way I could be any more alone, but now I’d finally realized how alone I truly was. Despite the crowds of people, and all the different places, and a limitless supply of sounds and colors packed together, there was nothing here that I could reach out and touch.

Everything that I could see was beautiful. I cried and cried, standing there, surrounded by that beauty, even though I wasn’t standing anywhere. I could hear the sound of my own tears. Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty.

They’re on a pedestal from the second they’re born, only they don’t realize it. Whenever they need something, their moms come running. They’re taught to believe that their penises make them superior, and that women are just there for them to use as they see fit. Then they go out into the world, where everything centers around them and their dicks. And it’s women who have to make it work. At the end of the day, where is this pain that men feel coming from? In their opinion: us. It’s all our fault—whether they’re unpopular, broke, jobless. Whatever it is, they blame women for all of their failures, all their problems. Now think about women. No matter how you see it, who’s actually responsible for the majority of the pain women feel? If you think about it that way, how could a man and a woman ever see eye to eye? It’s structurally impossible.

Beauty meant that you were good. And being good meant being happy. Happiness can be defined all kinds of ways, but human beings, consciously or unconsciously, are always pulling for their own version of happiness. Even people who want to die see death as a kind of solace, and view ending their lives as the only way to make it there. Happiness is the base unit of consciousness, our single greatest motivator.

As I passed below the haloes of the green and red traffic signals, I was taken by this strange view of the evening, the city streets full of people— people waiting, the people they were waiting for, people out to eat together, people going somewhere together, people heading home together. I allowed my thoughts to settle on the brightness filling their hearts and lungs, squinting as I walked along and counted all the players of this game I would never play.

Even if something happens to us, even if we die and never have to deal with them again, the same thing will happen to someone, somewhere. The same thing. The weak always go through this, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Because the strong never go away. That’s why you want to pretend to be like them, isn’t it? You want to join them.

In the cold December air, all the leaves, thousands upon thousands of them, flashed against the sky, drenched in gold. Every leaf rang with its own light, and all the light poured into me without end.

At first, suicide was just a word, a vague idea separate from reality. It pointed at a way that other people chose to die, people I didn't even know. But once the word became my own, it took on the strangest shape. I could feel it growing deep inside of me. Suicide wasn't something that happened to strangers. I could make it happen, if I wanted to.

there are way too many things you'll never remember. Sometimes a memory jumps out at you, even though almost everything is lost forever. But what if all the things that we can't remember are actually the most important ones?

Then it hit me: dying is just like sleeping. You only know you’re sleeping when you wake up the next day, but if morning never comes, you sleep forever. That must be what death is like. When someone dies, they don’t even know they’re dead. Because they never see it happen, nobody ever really dies. This hit me like a sucker punch.

Yeah, my mum was free labor—free labor with a pussy.

As long as you're living on this planet, you have to be serious about something, but it's better to be serious about a limited number of things.

I knew that it was cruel to be so optimistic, but, in my solitude, I couldn't resist the urge and spent entire days basking in idiotic fantasies, sometimes verging on prayer.

Then there are the real bastards, like my ex,” she shook her head. “He went around, patting himself on the back, like he’s so much better than all those men. ‘I know the pain that women feel, I respect women. I’ve written papers about it, I know where all the landmines are. My favorite author is Virginia Woolf’ and all that . . . So fucking what, though, right? How many times did you clean the house last month? How many times did you cook? How many times did you go grocery shopping?” I laughed.

Writing makes me happy. But it goes beyond that. Writing is my life’s work. I am absolutely positive that this is what I’m here to do. Even if it turns out that I don’t have the ability, and no one out there wants to read a single word of it, there’s nothing I can do about this feeling. I can’t make it go away.

There are all kinds of things in the world I don't understand, but I really wanted to understand you.

Night ended, morning came, and as I looked out on the blueness spreading into the corners of the sky, I thought about what he had told me, about all the light that was there and yet impossible to see.

Light spilled off every surface. The light of day. I meditated on this phrase and stared into the radiance.

Because we're always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.

There was always someone somewhere discovering a different life, a different experience than the day before, stepping off into uncharted territory. But I wasn't getting anywhere. I couldn't move; in fact, I was being pulled away, slipping further every second from the blinding light of that reality.

He used to tell me, ‘People are strange, Jun. They know nothing lasts forever, but still find time to laugh and cry and get upset, laboring over things and breaking things apart. I know it seems like none of it makes sense. But son, these things make life worth living. So don’t let anything get you down.

You can make people believe whatever you want. You can fool them like it’s nothing. But you can’t fool yourself, not really. That’s why what matters is how you think about your work in your own lifetime, how much you respect it, how hard you’re trying. Or tried.

I remembered how she wrote once about when you send someone a letter, how it's out of your hands. It's not yours anymore, even though you wrote it.

You have no idea what I'm talking about do you?" She exhaled through her nose. "It's really simple, I promise. Why do people think this is okay? Why do people see no harm in having children? They do it with smiles on their faces, as if it's not an act of violence. You force this other being into the world, this other being that never asked to be born. You do this absurd thing because that's what you want for yourself, and that doesn't make any sense.....I know how this sounds. You think I sound extreme, or detached from reality. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is real life. That's what I'm talking about - the pain that comes with reality. Not that anyone ever sees it...Most people go around believing life is good, one giant blessing, like the world we live in is so beautiful, and despite the pain, it's actually this amazing place

It only took me a couple of hours to realise that she was a woman of talents beyond anything I could imagine - even though I was a stranger to such talents myself.

My life is nowhere but here, and I am nowhere else.

I've already had to deal with the hardest thing in the world. You know what that was? It was to try to meet someone who's already disappeared.

But I wasn't crying because I was sad. I guess I was crying because we had nowhere else to go, no choice but to go on living in this world. Crying because we had no other world to choose, and crying at everything before us, everything around us.

What is dying anyway? I let this impossible question fill the darkness of my bedroom. I thought about how somebody was always dying somewhere, at any given moment. This isn’t a fable or a joke or an abstract idea. People are always dying. It’s a perfect truth. No matter how we live our lives, we all die sooner or later. In which case, living is really just waiting to die. And if that’s true, why bother living at all? Why was I even alive? I made myself crazy, tossing and turning, hyperventilat- ing. Then it hit me: dying is just like sleeping. You only know you’re sleeping when you wake up the next day, but if morn- ing never comes, you sleep forever. That must be what death is like. When someone dies, they don’t even know they’re dead. Because they never see it happen, nobody ever really dies. This hit me like a sucker punch.

When I was writing, I realized something. Your voice reminds me of a 6B. I'm not sure if this is going to make sense, but it's like they're soft and rigid at the same time. Almost unbreakable.

to me that maybe I was where I was today because I hadn’t chosen anything.

The sleep was like as it had been cut out from a slab of clay, round and clean.

No, I shouted. I don’t want that kind of strength. I don’t want to be dragged into this, and I don’t want to drag anyone else down, either.

How many summers had I been alive? The obvious answer was as many summers as my age; but for some reason I felt the presence of another number, a different, realer number somewhere out there in the world. I thought about this as I gazed into the summer glare.

You think about how other people feel. You're so kind. It makes sense. Because we're always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.

People are strange, Jun. They know nothing lasts forever, but still find time to laugh and cry and get upset, laboring over things and breaking things apart.

It's funny, but when I'm doing nothing, I get this feeling like I'm fighting something. Stick... fighting. It never goes away, even when I'm in bed, even when I'm walking around.

No matter how we live our lives, we all die sooner or later. In which case, living is really just waiting to die. And if that's true, why bother living at all? Why was I even alive?

It’s not like I want people to hate me. I’m just not about to go out of my way to make them like me, either. Being liked is wonderful and all, but that’s not what life is about, you know?

Had I ever chosen anything? Had I made some kind of choice that led me here? Thinking it over, I stared at the cell phone in my hands. The job that I was doing, the place where I was living, the fact that I was all alone and had no one to talk to. Could these have been the result of some decision that I'd made? I heard a crow crying somewhere in the distance and turned to the window. It occurred to me that maybe I was where I was today because I hadn't chosen anything. I applied to whatever colleges my teacher suggested and fell into a job after graduation, which I'd left only because I had to escape. I was only able to go freelance because of all the leg-work that Hijiri did for me. Had I ever chosen anything on my own, made something happen? Not once. And that's why I was here now, all alone.

what matters is how you think about your work in your own lifetime, how much you respect it, how hard you're trying.

Why does the night have to be so beautiful?

Luck, effort, and ability are often indistinguishable.

It's always about them. They're only thinking about themselves. They never think about the kid being born. No one gives a damn how that child is going to feel. Isn't that crazy? Once they've had a baby, most parents would do anything to shelter them from any form of pain or suffering. But here it is, the only way to actually keep your child from ever knowing pain. Don't have them in the first place.

Sadness and happiness are all experienced by someone else before us; we’re simply following their lead.

A long time ago, all these important people wrote about how dirty women are, and why that’s bad.

For people to actually live by some golden rule, we’d have to be living in a world with no contradictions. But we don’t live in a world like that. No one does. People do what works for them, whatever makes them feel good. But because nobody likes getting stepped on, people start spouting crap about being good to others, being considerate, whatever. Tell me I’m wrong. Everyone does things they don’t want people doing back. Predators eat prey, and school serves no real purpose other than separating the kids who have what it takes from the ones who don’t. That’s the whole point. Everywhere you look, the strong walk all over the weak. Even those fools who think they’ve found the answers by coming up with perfect little sayings about how the world ought to be can’t escape it. Because the real world is everywhere.

If anything has meaning, everything does. And if nothing has meaning, nothing does. That's what I was saying. It's all the same. You, me, we're all free to interpret the world however we want. We see the world differently. It's that simple.

If you don’t like it, stopping it is up to you and no one else. It’s that simple. You should know that this rule about treating others the way you want to be treated is bullshit. Total bullshit. It’s just this thing that people with no power and no talent tell themselves. Wake the hell up.

They don't know how they make other people feel, and they've never stopped to think about other people's pain.

If video games make you stupid, then what do mobile phones do to you?

My conclusion is that when it comes to the face, emotions are seventy per cent from the eyebrows and thirty per cent from the mouth.

Aizawa was alive, or at least I thought he was, but if we never saw each other again, if I had seen him for the last time ever, in what sense was he alive?

Sometimes you can’t see the scars. But there’s a lot of pain, I think.” After that, she was quiet.

As I start home she waves at me and says, "Al Pacino!" I raise my hand and wave back and say, "Al Pacino!

Sometimes I felt like I had left myself behind.

Because at night, only half the world remains.

I had the lonely feeling that I was the only one around who didn’t know the rules.

I recognize that luck, effort, and ability are often indistinguishable. And I know that, in the end, I’m just another human being, who’s born only to die. I know that in reality, it makes no difference whether I write novels, and it makes no difference if anyone cares. With all the countless books already out there, the world won’t notice if I fail to publish even one book with my name on it. That’s no tragedy. I know that. I get that.

Why do people see no harm in having children? They do it with smiles on their faces, as if it’s not an act of violence. You force this other being into the world, this other being that never asked to be born. You do this absurd thing because that’s what you want for yourself, and that doesn’t make any sense.

What had come over me? The whole day I'd been running through old memories, getting lost in my own thoughts. But I guess that made sense. It was only natural. Despite Makiko being, in the present, my closest living relative, the bulk of our shared experiences were in the past, from another planet. In that sense, spending time with Makiko meant living in the past.

What did it mean for us to be friends? What was a friend supposed to do? I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

I felt something like a cross between heartache and reassurance.

We'll understand some things while we're alive and some after we die. But it doesn't really matter when it happens. What matters is that all the pain and all the sadness have meaning.

You know, putting off stuff and not doing anything, and not going and seeing somebody when I really wanted to. I stopped that. It's too risky... you should just go and see someone when you can, right?" "When did you figure that out?" "When I was in first grade. And I wrote it down?" "Really? You're smart.

There's the sound of someone breathing, that's what I'm listening to. Goodbye. The stars are setting, and in their last breath somebody tells me goodbye. Someone is saying goodbye, and now I can't move at all, and all I can do is hold my breath, and silently listen to the final sound, nothing to do but listen silently to the very last echo of that sound.

The paintings here were mystifying. In the reds and greens of the canvases, maidens danced with animals, a goat or something carried a violin in its mouth, and a man and a woman embraced under a gigantic blazing bouquet. This swarm of unrelated images was like a glimpse into a dream. But not a good one. The joy I saw there was ferocious, and the sadness suffocatingly cold. Blues thrown onto the canvas warred with yellows approaching like tornadoes. People gathered round aghast to watch a circus spin to life.

Something really painful happened to them. Something really, really sad. But know what? They made it though. That’s why they can live in perfect harmony. After everything, after all the pain, they made it here. It looks like a normal room, but it’s really Heaven.

It’s the only thing we can do. And not just for our sake, you know? It’s for the other kids, too, even if they don’t realize it. But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is we understand it, you and me. We get it. And, like, in that way, living with this weakness, accepting it completely, that’s the greatest strength in the whole world. It’s not just my dad or them or us. We do it for everyone who’s weak everywhere, in the name of actual strength. Everything we take, all of the abuse, we do it to rise above. We do it for the people who know how important it is.

For no Reason?" "For every reason". Rie emptied her sake cup. "Let's start with how she viewed my dad. He was your typical king of the hill. We couldn't say anything growing up. I was a kid, and a girl on top of that, so he never saw me as a real person. I never even heard the guy call my mother by name. It was always Hey you. We were constantly on red alert because my dad would beat the shit out of us or break things for no reason. Of course, outside the home, he was a pillar of the community. He ran the neighborhood council, and all that. My mom was my mom, always laughing it off, running the bath for him, cleaning up after him, feeding him. She looked after both of his parents all the way to the end, too. There was no inheritance, either. Yeah, my mom was free labor - free labor with a pussy.

Dusk was taking over. Like a cascade of lace—thousands of thin, soft layers fluttering above countless winking lights far and near. These dots of feeble light reminded me of the port town we lived in for a few years after I was born. Sailboats coming into port from the dark sea on summer evenings. People floating in the waves, little kids losing their minds when they see the white skin of a foreigner for the first time. This is how I saw the lights of home—above the faded signs, atop the concrete telephone poles, under the awnings of the stores, and by the bollards where the ships tied off to the docks—clusters of lights strung from wires and bobbing in the evening breeze.

Their so-called spirituality is completely self-serving, designed to make them happy, or make the people around them think they’ve found some kind of happiness. It’s this shallow belief in immediate profit. They go around talking about seeing something big. As if everything they feel, everything they’re thinking, is so big, bigger than all of us. That’s what they do. They act like they’re all big, ready to share their happiness with everyone, when the only happiness they care about is their own. Like, why can’t they just keep all that stuff to themselves and leave the rest of us alone?

Which is the real Grandma? The Grandma who used to pick me up from nursery school? The Grandma who made me her special veggie meatballs? Breakfast-time Grandma when she dipped her bread in coffee before eating it? Gentle Grandma who, whenever Mum scolded me and pushed me away would sit next to me and let me talk? When Grandma goes away from this earth, where will she go? It's not happened yet, but I'm thinking about it now because I know that one day it's definitely, for sure, going to happen, And when I think about it, the air inside my chest gets heavier and heavier and it feels as if there's no escape.

that. But the more we meet up, the harder it gets. Every time I see him, I dunno . . . it just gets harder. I mean, it’s good when we’re together. But after . . . I don’t know how to explain it. ‘Dead inside’ is a little too dramatic. I just feel hard and numb, like some part of me is losing all feeling. I can’t stand being alone. I know this is my own doing, but it makes me really sad. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but I know it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

The whole situation,” she said. “You’re betting that the child that you bring into this will be at least as happy as you’ve been, at least as fortunate as you’ve been, or, at a minimum, that they’ll be able to say they’re happy they were born. Everyone says life is both good and bad, but the majority of people think it’s mostly good. That’s why people go through with it. The odds are decent. Sure, everyone dies eventually, but life has meaning, even pain and suffering have meaning, and there’s so much joy. There’s not a doubt in your mind that your child will see it that way, just like you. No one thinks they’ll pull the short straw. They’re convinced everything will work out fine. But that’s just people believing what they want to believe. For their own benefit. The really horrible part is that this bet isn’t yours to make. You’re betting with another person’s life. Not yours.

I don’t know, I guess sometimes I feel happy or sad or worried…or maybe I get really into something on TV, or really like the flavor of some giant shrimp, whatever. But sometimes I have to wonder if those thoughts or feelings might be coming from the things I read for work. When I start to feel emotional about something, I can’t tell if I’m actually feeling that way. What if it’s just something somebody else wrote in a book? Or maybe a line or a performance from some movie…Either way, I get this feeling like I’m quoting somebody else’s work […] like the feelings aren’t mine.

I happened to catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window glass. The image of myself that floated to the surface, tinged with blue against a backdrop of the signs, walls, and windows of the nearby buildings, looked absolutely miserable. Not sad, or tired, but the dictionary definition of a miserable person. This was the woman that I saw in the glass, while an assortment of other objects drifted in and out of the reflection. The space around my head was wild with baby hair or stray hairs that had come free. My shoulders sagged, and the skin around my eyes was sunken. My arms and legs looked stubby while my neck looked long and skinny. The tendons around my collarbone and throat stuck out, and my skin was anything but supple, as if the flesh had been deflated, leaving bizarre diagonal lines on my cheeks. What I saw in the reflection was myself, in a cardigan and faded jeans, at age thirty-four. Just a miserable woman, who couldn’t even enjoy herself on a gorgeous day like this, on her own in the city, desperately hugging a bag full to bursting with the kind of things that other people wave off or throw in the trash the first chance they get.