By reading Huckleberry Finn I felt I was able to justify my act of going into the mountain forest at night and sleeping among the trees with a sense of security which I could never find indoors.

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.

Did I hurt you in the parking lot?""No, m'lady. I fell, so I could put a tracker on your car."Great.

Hope that justice will be done to those brave men who stood up for their convictions.

The catch phrase for the day is 'Do an act of kindness. Help one person smile.'

Politics is different than business.

The most underutilized resource in all of health care is the patient.

I like films that are so funny, dramatic and lifelike simultaneously, that you are laughing and cringing simultaneously all throughout the film.

The financial reward is great and I love the life I have, but all money makes possible is for you to stop worrying about money. Then you have freedom to live your life.

I've got many, many demons that affect me on many, many levels.

I ordered a soda - caffeine-free, low sodium, no artificial flavors. They brought me a glass of water.

Poor and content, is rich and rich enough; But riches, fineless, is as poor as winter, To him that ever fears he shall be poor.