It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.
There is nothing more satisfying than having a sentence fall into place in a way you feel is right, and then adding another one and then another one. It’s extraordinarily satisfying.
Artists invent things as a way of telling the truth.
Work, work, work, but what mark do we leave, what point do we make? People who are too beholden to work become like erasers: as things move forward, they leave in their wake no trace of themselves.
Isn’t telling about something-using words, English or Japanese-already something of an invention? Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?
I am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it’s sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It’s a very laborious process, but I love doing it.
When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.
There are animals we haven’t stopped by. Don’t think they’re harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!
My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.
It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.
Art is the suitcase of history, carrying the essentials. Art is the life buoy of history. Art is seed, art is memory, art is vaccine.
I know what you want. You want a story that won’t surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won’t make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.
If you don’t have dreams, how do you maneuver reality? Where do you get the ideas to change reality if not from dreams?
Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.
My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanour – calm, quiet and introspective – did something to soothe my shattered self.
As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.
A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.
The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.