I have survived by representing these sufferings of mine in the form of the novel.

From another point of view, a new situation now seems to be arising in which Japan's prosperity is going to be incorporated into the expanding potential power of both production and consumption in Asia at large.

In the recent years there have been criticisms levelled against Japan suggesting that she should offer more military forces to the United Nations forces and thereby play a more active role in the keeping and restoration of peace in various parts of the world.

After I got married, the first child born to us was mentally handicapped.

Even though we now have the half-century-old new Constitution, there is a popular sentiment of support for the old one that lives on in reality in some quarters.

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.

I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.

I have survived by representing these sufferings of mine in the form of the novel.

By reading Huckleberry Finn I felt I was able to justify my act of going into the mountain forest at night and sleeping among the trees with a sense of security which I could never find indoors.

The way Japan had tried to build up a modern state modelled on the West was cataclysmic.

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.

As I grew up, I was continually to suffer hardships in different realms of life - in my family, in my relationship to Japanese society and in my way of living at large in the latter half of the twentieth century.

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

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.

In Japan itself there have all along been attempts by some to obliterate the article about renunciation of war from the Constitution and for this purpose they have taken every opportunity to make use of pressures from abroad.

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.

The ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the position of an invader in Asia.

If any suffering was fruitless it was the agony of a hangover what he suffered now could not expiate suffering of any other kind.

I've always hated narrative songs. I hate those songs where, basically, it's an unfolding of a story.

To many men... the miasma of peace seems more suffocating than the bracing air of war.

I think that it's the job of the artist to be in transition and constantly learn more.

When you are in the grips of low self-esteem, it's painful, and it certainly doesn't feel like pride. But I believe that this is the dark, quieter side of pride thwarted pride.

Be the calm, centered version of yourself. This is the most productive and inspiring version.

I have very talented art directors in my agency who start out telling me, 'Well, this is what the picture is... ' I ask, 'Well, what's the headline?' and they say, 'We haven't done that yet, but it looks this way.' But I'm still writing copy, almost every day.

In trading/ investing it's not about how much you make, but how much you don't lose

It is fair to say the New Testament is the most ethically sophisticated of the great scriptures; the proper comparison for the Qur'an is with the Old Testament - against which it holds its own.

With every bathroom renovation, there are three areas that I focus on: budget, function and style.

I don't really talk about my personal life. It's a strange and funny and weird thing. Sometimes you have a conversation with someone and the paparazzi snaps a picture of you and people decide you're dating. If I try to answer everything people say, I would be up all night.

Everything starts with writing. I heard Nikki Giovanni and was blown away. I just thought 'wow'; she was writing from a black girl's perspective, and the imagery was so vivid that I started doing spoken word.

People have become aware that way that we've been eating is making us sick.

As you get older you're told to be sensible, but it's important for writing if you're a comic that you're able to still access that childlike thing.

I'm bisexual.

Introverts treasure the close relationships they have stretched so much to make.

There will always be a place for bunnies to talk in rhyme, but that's not what I do.

In a Western, you talk more with your eyes and your actions than you do with big speeches. I love that.

My parents were secular. I am an atheist.

I have issues with inheritance tax, particularly coming from a migrant family. My dad has worked incredibly hard all his life, so it seems odd to me that someone who has gone through that experience and has managed to save then gets taxed for dying.

I feel like there is this weird thing where celebrity involvement in political campaigns kind of goes together like peanut butter and chocolate. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.

I am happier now than I have ever been.

Standing near the door, we dipped our fingers in the holy water, crossed and blessed ourselves, and proceeded up to the sleeping-room, in the usual order, two by two.

I didn't know anything about '12 Years a Slave.' Not the book, not Solomon Northup, which I was quite shocked by, once I'd read it, that it wasn't a seminal text. I think it deserves to be.

I have a lot of friends that are ex-Miss Alabamas and ex-Miss Georgias.