It grows because you tend it.′ This was a phrase often repeated by my great-aunt when she was alive. ‘That’s how love is,’ she used to say. ‘If the love is true, then treat it the same way you would a plant – feed it, protect it from the elements – you must do absolutely everything you can. But if it isn’t true, then it’s best to just let it wither on the vine.

— Hiromi Kawakami

Hiromi Kawakami Quotes

All translation is mistranslation. But maybe there should be a second part to that phrase. All conversation is misunderstanding. I think about the discrepancies that will always exist in the gaps between languages whenever I go anywhere outside Japan, anywhere where Japanese, my native language, isn’t spoken. But even when I use my native language, the same thing does apply. All language is misunderstanding. In degrees.

— Hiromi Kawakami

That’s why I left the apartment. Out on the street, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t the only one here, that I wasn’t the only one feeling lonely. But this wasn’t the kind of thing you could tell just by looking at a passerby. The harder I tried to see, the less sure I was.

— Hiromi Kawakami

It was as if everyone doled themselves out in such small portions. Never completely open, not all at once.

— Hiromi Kawakami

It grows because you tend it.′ This was a phrase often repeated by my great-aunt when she was alive. ‘That’s how love is,’ she used to say. ‘If the love is true, then treat it the same way you would a plant – feed it, protect it from the elements – you must do absolutely everything you can. But if it isn’t true, then it’s best to just let it wither on the vine.

— Hiromi Kawakami

Is that what you called benevolence? With Sensei, his benevolent nature seemed to originate from his sense of fair-mindedness. It wasn’t about being kind to me; rather, it was born from a teacherly attitude of being willing to listen to my opinion without prejudice. I found this considerably more wonderful than him just being nice to me.

— Hiromi Kawakami

I had screwed up. Grown-ups didn’t go around blurting out troublesome things to people. You couldn’t just blithely disclose something that would then make it impossible to greet them with a smile the next day.

— Hiromi Kawakami

That was the decision of a lifetime.

— Hiromi Kawakami

The idea... was slightly off-putting, but once I’ve started drinking, not much can stop me, so I went along.

— Hiromi Kawakami

For the first time in ages, we had a no-gravity alert. ‘This is the Disaster Preparedness Office speaking. We have been informed that there is an eighty per cent chance that a no-gravity event will take place between two and five o’clock this afternoon. Please remain indoors during those hours. If you must go out for reason, please make sure you are well weighted down. This has been a message from the Disaster Preparedness Office.

— Hiromi Kawakami

He tried to convince them that, since he was already in his late forties, their marriage might be more of a tea-drinking relationship.

— Hiromi Kawakami

Even the smallest hole is enough to send a balloon spiraling to the ground. The falsification of memory is like that. All it takes is one individual who remembers the truth, said Romi, for the whole edifice to collapse.

— Hiromi Kawakami

People have the right to fall in love, but not the right to be loved.

— Hiromi Kawakami

My wife was the kind of person who didn’t think things through. She just loved the things she loved, and hated the things she hated.

— Hiromi Kawakami

It is hard to be ordinary. Extraordinary things abound. But the extraordinary usually can’t be sustained. Sooner or later, it breaks. Beyond the break it is easy. Keeping it ordinary is hardest of all.

— Hiromi Kawakami

Of course, everyone has a touch of madness in them. In fact, there’s something frightening about a person who isn’t a little crazy.

— Hiromi Kawakami

Not once did he ever bring up anything of consequence. Then again, there aren’t many things in this world that are really of any consequence. Perhaps there are none at all.

— Hiromi Kawakami

Abandoned houses stand empty, foreboding, for a decade or so, but if they are left longer than that, they begin anew, they are reborn as living things.

— Hiromi Kawakami

I hadn’t known that he felt the same way. By the time I found out, my feelings had already been oddly distorted, squashed down into the furthest reaches of my heart.

— Hiromi Kawakami

We could go anywhere at all, as long as I’m with you.

— Hiromi Kawakami

He had underestimated me. All along. Even though I had not underestimated him. But, how do you love someone without blinding yourself? Don’t we all have to indulge each other, let our guard down, and -ever so slightly- lower ourselves, in order to love someone?

— Hiromi Kawakami
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