Tokyo Ueno Station Quotes

To speak is to stumble, to hesitate, to detour and hit dead ends. To listen is straightforward. You can always just listen.

To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past while still being in full view of everyone.

And as I retreated into the future, the only thing I could ever see was the past

Time does not pass. Time never ends.

I spent my life thinking about people who were not there. People who were not with me, people who were no longer in this world.

The only thing I was guilty of was being unable to adjust. I could adapt to any kind of work; it was life itself that I could not adjust to. The pain of life, the sadness... and the joy...

I used to think life was like a book: you turn the first page, and there’s the next, and as you go on turning page after page, eventually you reach the last one. But life is nothing like a story in a book. There may be words, and the pages may be numbered, but there is no plot. There may be an ending, but there is no end.

It wasn’t that I wanted to die; it was just that I was tired of trying.

Old men and women pray that they die suddenly so they don’t become a burden to their families.

Light does not illuminate. It only looks for things to illuminate. And I had never been found by the light. I would always be in darkness—

I never carried any photos with me, but I was always surrounded by people, places, and times gone by. And as I retreated into the future, the only thing I could ever see was the past.

I was always tired. There was never a time I was not tired. Not when life had its claws in me, and not when I escaped from it. I did not live with intent, I only lived. But that’s all over now.

Redoute, the man who painted these roses, died over a hundred seventy years ago. And the rose bushes that he studied are more than likely no longer living either. But once, somewhere, those roses were in bloom. And once, somewhere, a painter lived. And now, through these pieces of paper divorced from the realities of the past, like fantastical flowers that do not exist in our world, these roses bloom.

I was relieved that he left, of course, but at the same time I thought what a thing of sin poverty was, that there could be nothing more sinful than forcing a small child to lie. The wages of that sin were poverty, a wage that one could not endure, leading one to sin again, and as long as one could not pull oneself out of poverty, the cycle would repeat until death.

I was not afraid of ghosts. Nor was I afraid of death or dying. I was afraid of living this life not knowing when it might end.

It was nothing as sweet as nostalgia or a longing for bygone days, just a constant absence from the present, an anger toward the future.

Today was still today, not yet opening toward tomorrow. Hidden within today was a past longer than the present…

Time had slowed to a sluggish crawl. I walked faster, but each step plunged me deeper into the depths of stillness. If time could pass so slowly that its passage was imperceptible, then is death where time stops and the self is left all alone in space? Is death where space and the self are erased and only time continues? Where had Koichi gone to? Had he really disappeared completely?

The memories of the past that I could not get rid of were all contained in a box. And time had sealed the lid. A box who's lid is sealed by time should not be opened. Were it opened, I would be plunged at once into the past.

Raindrops suddenly began to fall, wetting the roofs of the huts. They fall regularly, like the weight of life or of time. On nights when it rained, I couldn't stop myself from listening to the sound, which kept me from sleeping. Insomnia, then eternal sleep--held apart from one by death and the other by life, brought closer to one by life and the other by death, and the rain, the rain, the rain, the rain. It rained on the day that my only son died.

I went outside. The rain had stopped. The air, washed by the rain, was serene, and the waves sounded closer than usual. The full moon shone like a pearl in the night sky. The moonlight made it look as if all the houses had sunk to the bottom of a lake. The road stretched ahead, white. It was the road that led to Migitahama. A gust of wind and the petals from a wild cherry tree went dancing, white against the darkness, and I remembered then that the cherry trees here blossomed two or three weeks later than in Tokyo. The waves roared. I stood alone in the darkness. Light does not illuminate. It only looks for things to illuminate. And I had never been found by the light. I would always be in darkness—

There’s that sound again.

If time could pass so slowly that its passage was imperceptible, then—is death where time stops and the self is left all alone in this space? Is death where space and the self are erased and only time continues?

I used to think life was like a book: you turn the first page, and there’s the next, and as you go on turning page after page, eventually you reach the last one. But life is nothing like a story in a book. There may be words, and the pages may be numbered, but there is no plot. There may be an ending, but there is no end.

fall into a pit, you can climb out, but once you slip from a sheer cliff, you cannot step firmly into a new life again. The only thing that can stop you from falling is the moment of your death. But nonetheless you have to keep living until you die, so there was nothing to do but continue working diligently for your reward.

Aunque el tiempo trace una línea recta entre el ayer, el hoy y el mañana, en la vida realmente no hay un pasado, un presente y un futuro. A cada uno de nosotros nos toca cargar con una cantidad inconmensurable de tiempo, casi insostenible, y con ese peso vivimos, y con ese peso morimos.

I wanted to give you something you can wear, so Yoko and I went up to Sendai together and chose a watch, one we thought looked most like you. I know you don't need to worry about time anymore, but I thought you don't have anything on your own...

Before, we had families. We had houses. Nobody starts off life in a hovel made of cardboard and tarps, and nobody becomes homeless because they want to be. One thing happens, then another. Some borrow at a high interest rate against their salary and then run off, disappearing in the night; some steal money or hurt others and get banged up in prison, and if they ever get back on the streets, they can’t return to their families. There were many homeless men in their forties and fifties who got fired; who were divorced by their wife, who had taken the kids and the house; or who turned to booze or gambling out of desperation and lost all their money, and no matter how many times they went to the employment office, couldn’t find the kind of work they wanted. They were like husks, still wearing suits.