The writer's job is the job of a clown …the clown who also talks about sorrow.

My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity.

The ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the position of an invader in Asia.

After the end of the Second World War it was a categorical imperative for us to declare that we renounced war forever in a central article of the new Constitution.

It is the second job of literature to create myth. But its first job is to destroy it.

Paradoxically, the people and state of Japan living on such moral props were not innocent but had been stained by their own past history of invading other Asian countries.

There's no better reading experience than going to the place where a text was written.

The ideal teacher student relationship exists when the student is better than the teacher.

To be upright and to have an imagination: that is enough to be a very good young man.

However, please allow me to say that the fundamental style of my writing has been to start from my personal matters and then to link it up with society, the state and the world.

If any suffering was fruitless it was the agony of a hangover; what he suffered now could not expiate suffering of any other kind.

Do not let the transient bitterness of the journey steal happiness from your life.

Slowly, all the days became Saturdays, full of more sunlight than I could remember seeing in a long time.

A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.

Creation, like destruction, always seems to get a little out of hand; otherwise it could hardly be called creative.

I don't want to develop a personality, just cut my face! Stretch it and staple it. Now I'm happy, or at least I look like it.

Don't rely on logic alone, nor speculation. Don't infer or be deceived by appearances.

Happiness is like a plant: It must be watered daily with giving thoughts and actions.

Sometimes the better an actor is, the less he's noticed.

Still water does not only run deep. It runs dangerously.

If you wish to obtain a great name or to found an establishment, be completely mad; but be sure that your madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age.