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

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.

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.

The Japanese chose the principle of eternal peace as the basis of morality for our rebirth after the War.

And remember this most of all: when it is darkest, that is when you can see the stars most clearly.

I have some very personal feelings about politics, but I don't get into it because I do comedy already.

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.

I think all countries need to aim to cut the CO2 emissions per person, taking account of externalities like imports and exports.

You need to know that even as life develops in superficially disappointing ways, there is still fun to be had.

I think sometimes negative campaigning, like so much, is in the eye of the beholder, and I don't think we'll ever get rid of it.

There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.

Nowadays they say you need a special chip to put in the TV so kids can't watch this and that. In my day, we didn't need a chip. My mom was the chip. End of story.

For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust.

Like pregnant women lose their teeth feeding the stranger, junkies lose their yellow fangs feeding the monkey.