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.

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

Daily walk in nature brings tranquility to one’s life.

Passion is of the nature of seed, and finds nourishment within, tending to a predominance which determines all currents towards itself, and makes the whole life its tributary.

I made this film 'The Beach,' which didn't take place in a city, and it didn't really suit me.

I'd love to play a gangster but I think people might say I looked a bit too young and cheeky to play a character who'd just blown someones head off!

Prabhupada's definitely affected the world in an absolute way. What he was giving us was the highest literature, the highest knowledge. I mean there just isn't anything higher.

Bullying is not gonna stop, but we can at least be confident enough to stand up to it.

Howard and Shirley were clothed, always, in an invisible layer of decorum that they never laid aside.

Standing in public in other people's clothes, pretending to be someone else. It's a strange way for a grown man to make a living.

God is the word that speaks itself.

Number one rule for fiction: Coincidence can be used to worsen a characters predicament, but never to solve his problems.