Yoko Ogawa Quotes

Solving a problem for which you know there’s an answer is like climbing a mountain with a guide, along a trail someone else has laid. In mathematics, the truth is somewhere out there in a place no one knows, beyond all the beaten paths. And it’s not always at the top of the mountain. It might be in a crack on the smoothest cliff or somewhere deep in the valley.

He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world

A problem isn't finished just because you've found the right answer.

Still, being alone doesn't mean you have to be miserable. In that sense it's different from losing something. You've still got yourself, even if you lose everything else. You've got to have faith in yourself and not get down just because you're on your own.

He preferred smart questions to smart answers.

When we grow up, we find ways to hide our anxieties, our loneliness, our fear and sorrow. But children hide nothing, putting everything into their tears, which they spread liberally about for the whole world to see.

Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort.

The Professor never really seemed to care whether we figured out the right answer to a problem. He preferred our wild, desperate guesses to silence, and he was even more delighted when those guesses led to new problems that took us beyond the original one. He had a special feeling for what he called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers.

Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won't find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions.

Among the many things that made the Professor an excellent teacher was the fact that he wasn't afraid to say 'we don't know.' For the Professor, there was no shame in admitting you didn't have the answer, it was a necessary step toward the truth. It was as important to teach us about the unknown or the unknowable as it was to teach us what had already been safely proven.

It was clear that he didn't remember me from one day to the next. The note clipped to his sleeve simply informed him that it was not our first meeting, but it could not bring back the memory of the time we had spent together.

Solving a problem for which you know there's an answer is like climbing a mountain with a guide, along a trail someone else has laid.

The truly correct proof is one that strikes a harmonious balance between strength and flexibility. There are plenty of proofs that are technically correct but are messy and inelegant or counterintuitive. But it's not something you can put into words — explaining why a formula is beautiful is like trying to explain why the stars are beautiful.

I prefer pi.

Because he had been- and in many ways still was- such a brilliant man, he no doubt understood the nature of his memory problem. It wasn't pride that prevented him from asking for help but a deep aversion to causing more trouble than necessary for those of us who lived in the normal world.

He seemed convinced that children's questions were much more important than those of an adult. He preferred smart questions to smart answers.

...The pages and pages of complex, impenetrable calculations might have contained the secrets of the universe, copied out of God's notebook. In my imagination, I saw the creator of the universe sitting in some distant corner of the sky, weaving a pattern of delicate lace so fine that that even the faintest light would shine through it. The lace stretches out infinitely in every direction, billowing gently in the cosmic breeze. You want desperately to touch it, hold it up to the light, rub it against your cheek. And all we ask is to be able to re-create the pattern, weave it again with numbers, somehow, in our own language; to make the tiniest fragment our own, to bring it back to eart.

He discounted the value of his own efforts, and seemed to feel that anyone would have done the same.

When the surface of your soul begins to stir, I imagine you want to capture the sensation in writing.” - Yoko Ogawa

For a torture to be effective, the pain has to be spread out; it has to come at regular intervals, with no end in sight. The water falls , drop after drop after drop, like the second hand of a watch, carving up time. The shock of each individual drop is insignificant, but the sensation is impossible to ignore. At first, one might manage to think about other things, but after five hours, after ten hours, it becomes unendurable. The repeated stimulation excites the nerves to a point where they literally explode, and every sensation in the body is absorbed into that one spot on the forehead---indeed, you come to feel that you are nothing but a forehead, into which a fine needle is being forced millimeter by millimeter. You can’t sleep or even speak, hypnotized by a suffering that is greater than any mere pain. In general, the victim goes mad before a day has passed.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa 1984 by George Orwell A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki The Overstory by Richard Powers The Farm by Joanne Ramos The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

—Mais, quelle que soit l'importance de l'événement, dès qu'il est écrit sur le papier, il ne fait plus qu'une ou deux lignes. "Mes yeux ne voyaient plus" ou "je n'avais plus un sou", il suffit d'une dizaine ou d'une vingtaine de lettres de l'alphabet. C'est pourquoi, quand on calligraphie des autobiographies, il arrive qu'on soit soulagé. On se dit que ce n'est pas la peine de trop réfléchir à tout ce qui se passe dans le monde.

Giáo sư coi Căn như số nguyên tố. Ông cho rằng trẻ con là những nguyên tử vô cùng cần thiết với những người lớn như chúng tôi, tựa như số nguyên tố là nhân tố cấu thành mọi số tự nhiên khác. Ông tin rằng bản thân mình tồn tại đượclà nhờ những đứa trẻ.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang Trust Exercise by Susan Choi The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa The Nix by Nathan Hill No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern The Overstory by Richard Powers

Quant à l'endroit où se trouvait mon père, le jour de ses funérailles, ma mère me l'avait indiqué. C'est un peu loin, mais un jour ou l'autre nous irons le rejoindre, il n'y a pas à craindre de s'égarer. Ton papa est gentil, il est seulement parti devant pour voir comment c'était, m'avait-elle dit.

I looked at the food I had just finished preparing and then at my hands. Sautéed pork garnished with lemon, a salad, and a soft, yellow omelet. I studied the dishes, one by one. They were all perfectly ordinary, but they looked delicious—satisfying food at the end of a long day. I looked at my palms again, filled suddenly with an absurd sense of satisfaction, as though I has just solved Fermat's Last Theorem.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The Circle by Dave Eggers Constance by Matthew Fitzsimmons Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood Severance by Ling Ma The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa 1984 by George Orwell