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A Personal Matter QUOTES

A Personal Matter QUOTES

1 " Peril-ridden and fragile, the imperfect human body, what a shameful thing it was! "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

2 " Once a person has been poisoned by self-deception, he can't make decisions about himself as neatly as all that. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

3 " One day Bird had approached his father with this question; he was six years old: Father, where was I a hundred years before I was born? Where will I be a hundred years after I die? Father, what will happen to me when I die? Without a word, his young father had punched him in the mouth, broke two of his teeth and bloodied his face, and Bird forgot the fear of death. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

4 " …I kept trying to run away. And I almost did. But it seems that reality compels you to live properly when you live in the real world. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

5 " Bird’s mother-in-law sat quite still, the world’s most forlorn ventriloquist. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

6 " Right now you're about the least attractive Bird I've ever seen...But I'll sleep with you just the same. I haven't been fastidious about morality since my husband committed suicide; besides, even if you intend to have the most disgusting kind of sex with me, I'm sure I'll discover something genuine in no matter what we do. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

7 " In this age of ours it's hard to say with certainty that having lived was better than not having been born in the first place. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

8 " I’m the one who’d like to send a telegram, AM RATHER IN TROUBLE—but addressed to whom? "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

9 " They gave the impression of unnaturally halted motion, like film caught in a projector. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

10 " You’re right about this being limited to me, it’s entirely a personal matter. But with some personal experiences that lead you way into a cave all by yourself, you must eventually come to a side tunnel or something opens on a truth that concerns not just yourself but everyone. And with that kind of experience at least the individual is rewarded for his suffering. Like Tom Sawyer! He had to suffer in a pitch-black cave, but at the same time he found his way out into the light he also found a bag of gold! But what I’m experiencing personally now is like digging a vertical mine shaft in isolation; it goes straight down to a hopeless depth and never opens on anybody else’s world. So I can sweat and suffer in that same dark cave and my personal experience won’t result in so much as a fragment of significance for anybody else. Hole-digging is all I’m doing, futile, shameful hole-digging; my Tom Sawyer is at the bottom of a desperately deep mine shaft and I wouldn’t be surprised if he went mad! "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

11 " More often than not he finds what he is looking for, and it destroys him. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

12 " Anyway, I wasn’t asleep; if I nap during the day I can never get to sleep at night. I was thinking about the pluralistic universe. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

13 " Bird had hoped at least to achieve a little humor in his vomiting style, but his actual performance was anything but funny. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

14 " Kafka, you know, wrote in a letter to his father, the only thing a parent can do for a child is to welcome it when it arrives. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

15 " You’re trying to make something relative out of the irrevocability of your husband’s death by assuming another universe where he is still alive. But you can’t make the absoluteness of death relative, no matter what psychological tricks you use. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

16 " You’re a comfort to me,” he said simply. “I mean to be. I bet you haven’t been comforted once since all this began. And that’s not good, Bird. At a time like this you must be careful to have someone comfort you almost more than you need at least once. Otherwise you’ll find yourself helpless when the time comes to summon up your courage and break away from chaos. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

17 " The cul-de-sac was shaped like a stomach, a stomach with an obstruction in the duodenum. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

18 " After a blank of seven years it had taken him and his friend just seven minutes of conversation to eliminate everything worthy of their mutual curiosity. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

19 " Evening was deepening, and the fever of early summer, like the temperature of a dead giant, had dropped completely from the covering air. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter

20 " Suddenly he is sighted by a giant phacochoere. "

― Kenzaburō Ōe , A Personal Matter