Yasunari Kawabata

“It was a stern night, the sky crowded with stars.”

“For a woman to see a man's face, to see his bare skin, was a delight. But for her to see his naked soul, that was a pleasure that could kill.”

“The house was quiet, and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night was like the conscious being of the book.”

“The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.”

“Silence is the maturation of wisdom.”

“In the spring, the cherry blossoms, in the summer the cuckoo. In autumn the moon, and in winter the snow, clear, cold.”

“The sound of the freezing of snow over the land seemed to roar deep into the earth.”

“Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows over it.”

“From the moment of birth we are haunted by death.”

“There is no country as beautiful as Japan.”

“The appreciation of beauty is a moral calling.”

“The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side.”

“Probably nothing in the world is more desolate than a district of hot springs in the fall.”

“Even if a man has a hundred gold pieces, he can't wear a hundred suits of clothes.”

“If I don't die, I'll keep writing.”