Home > Author > Akira Kurosawa
61 " I like unformed characters. This may be because, no matter how old I get, I am still unformed myself; in any case, it is in watching someone unformed enter the path to perfection that my fascination knows no bounds. "
― Akira Kurosawa , Something Like an Autobiography
62 " In one such rented attic room was a young man who made his living selling fish. Every morning he would get up before the crack of dawn and carry his tin box to the riverbank, where he bought his goods. He worked furiously for an entire month, and then at the end of the month he put on his finest clothes and went out to buy a prostitute—as if that made it all worthwhile. "
63 " I had no idea what role these popular arts of storytelling and singing would play in my future; I just enjoyed them without thinking about it. "
64 " This is probably true of human life everywhere—a light exterior hides a dark underside "
65 " This is probably true of human life everywhere—a light exterior hides a dark underside. "
66 " Human beings have launched satellites into outer space, and yet they still grovel on earth looking at their own feet like wild dogs. What is to become of our planet? "
67 " Seeing how much hope my father still cherished for my prospects as an artist, I felt like starting over in painting. I began sketching again. "
68 " My brother had always said that. He claimed that when human beings lived past thirty, all they did was become uglier and meaner, so he had no intention of doing so. "
69 " So when my mother expressed her concern to me, I laughed it away, saying, “People who talk about dying don’t die. "
70 " The relative who had said “What are you doing?” when I was paralyzed at the sight of my brother’s corpse had not been able to intimidate me, but I could not forgive myself for what I had said to my mother. And how terrible the results had been for my brother. What a fool I am! "
71 " Uekusa Keinosuke has also said my personality is like that of a sunflower, so there must be some truth to the allegation that I am more sanguine than my brother was. But I prefer to think of my brother as a negative strip of film that led to my own development as a positive image. "
72 " I became impatient with my own aimlessness. "
73 " In other words, I did not—and still don’t—have a completely personal, distinctive, way of looking at things. "
74 " At this time of my life I did not have a great deal of enthusiasm for Japanese movies, in comparison with foreign pictures. But my interests were still those of a child. "
75 " To develop a personal vision isn’t easy. But when I was a young man, this insufficiency caused me not only dissatisfaction but uneasiness. I felt I had to fashion my own way of seeing, and I became more impatient. Every exhibition I went to seemed to prove to me that every painter in Japan had his own personal style and his own personal vision. I became more and more irritated with myself. "
76 " I went straight to my father and begged him to enter me in Ochiai’s fencing school. He was overjoyed. I don’t know if my interest had occasioned a resurgence of the samurai blood in my father’s veins or the reawakening of his military-academy teacher’s spirit, but, whichever it was, the effect was remarkable. "
77 " But lately tenpura-soba doesn’t taste like it used to. "
78 " And that’s just how it is. During youth the desire for self-expression is so overpowering that most people end up by losing all grasp on their real selves. I was no exception. I strained to perform technical tours de force as I painted, and the resulting pictures revealed my distaste for myself. Gradually I lost confidence in my abilities, and the act of painting itself became painful for me. "
79 " The result of spending my time on a kind of painting for which I felt no enthusiasm at all was a further, more irrevocable loss of my real desire to paint. "
80 " Since I had been doing nothing but follow my brother’s lead, his suicide sent me spinning like a top. I believe this was a very dangerous turning point in my life. "