Kenzaburō Ōe

“...'He's black, you see that! I thought he would be all along.' Harelip's voice trembled with excitement. 'He's a real black man, you see!''What are they going to do with him, shoot him?''Shoot him!' Harelip shouted, gasping with surprise. 'Shoot a real live black man!'Because he's the enemy,' I asserted without confidence. 'Enemy! You call him an enemy!' Harelip seized my shirt and railed at me hoarsely, spraying my face with saliva through his lip.'He's a black man, he's no enemy!”

“It's a little bit like what Akari said to his grandmother in Shikoku, during her final illness: 'Please cheer up and die!”

“I thought about death and was gripped by feelings which choked my chest and made my throat dry, a sudden pushing and shoving in my guts. It was a sort of chronic ailment I had. Once that feeling and that agitation of my whole body had begun, I wouldn't be able to shake it off until I got to asleep. And I couldn't recall it with the same impact in the daytime.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Bird, don't sound so crushed. The fact that I had never had sex before can only have been significant for me, if it had any meaning at all-it had nothing to do with you.”

“Bird, hesitating, recalled a line from the English textbook he was reading with his students; a young American was speaking angrily: Are you kidding me? Are you looking for a fight?”

“In introducing himself, he had said, "I'm the father," and the doctors had winced. Because something else must have echoed in their ears- I'm the monster's father.”

“Manusia ialah khalifah; apabila kerajaan tidak bijak dan rakyat menderita, kenapa ia tidak membuat perubahan?”

“Understanding comes hard to persons of high rank who are accustomed to phony lifestyles that involve no daily work.”

“We are much too tolerant of the moral aberration of statesmen and bureaucrats.”

“The people of Hiroshima went to work at once to restore human society in the aftermath of the great atomic flood. They were concerned to salvage their own lives, but in the process they also salvaged the souls of the people who have brought the atomic bomb.”

“It takes a person of great care and insight to watch for any abnormality in the green grass even while it grows abundantly and healthily.”

“The dead can survive as part of the lives of those that still live.”

“We naturally try to forget our personal tragedies, serious or trifling, as soon as possible (even something as petty as being scorned or disdained by a stranger on a street corner). We try not to carry these things over to tomorrow. It is not strange, therefore, that the whole human race is trying to put Hiroshima, the extreme point of human tragedy, completely out of mind.”

“Hiroshima is like a nakedly exposed wound inflicted on all mankind.”