Cynthia Kadohata Quotes & Sayings

I watched a swatch of the sky turn red. The red spread like blood in the sea: red, red, red, and then less and less red, until there was only blue left. I squinted as the sun rose. I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke up, my father was carrying me into the house. Sam walked beside us carrying the lawn chair, which seemed almost as big as he was. Inside the living room my father laid me on my cot. "She's gone," he said. — Cynthia Kadohata

Sometime it very inconvenient to tell the truth. — Cynthia Kadohata

I have so much respect for people who do blue-collar work because I come from that background myself. — Cynthia Kadohata

'Weedflower' was already in the copyediting phase when I heard about the Newbery award, so it didn't really influence my writing of that book, but since then, I have become more aware of having an audience. — Cynthia Kadohata

Some days I think she was really miserable, because she cried a lot. In a way, I'd had to steel my heart to her crying. You need to steel yourself to a lot of things when someone in your family is really sick. — Cynthia Kadohata

For everything in my life, I would ask, Why? Why didn't the Chinese lady have teeth? Probably it was because she didn't brush them enough. I asked myself why we had to move to Georgia. It was because my father needed to work at this hatchery so he could support us better. Why did I kind of like that boy? Because he was kind of cute. And why was Lynnie sick? Why? There was no answer to that. — Cynthia Kadohata

Was I good or bad or mixed or what? And was the way I acted every day the real me, or was the real me somewhere so deep that I would never even know it? — Cynthia Kadohata

For me, books are music for my mind and my imagination. When I am stuck in something I'm writing, I simply read my way out of being stuck. You can never waste time reading. — Cynthia Kadohata

I try to find my deepest, often hidden feelings about what's working and what's not. This is difficult because I do lie to myself without being aware that that's what I'm doing. — Cynthia Kadohata

Usually while I lay in bed, I liked to think of new things I could do for Lynnie. Maybe I could let her try my pillow to see if she liked it better. Or I could bring her a new cracker she'd never tried. Or maybe I could even find a new book that she'd never heard of and read it to her, even though she had heard of every book in the world. That night I knew that nothing I could do would make her feel better. So I lay in bed and listened to her mournful noise and didn't feel love or hate or anger or anything at all except despair. — Cynthia Kadohata

It took seven years from the day I decided I wanted to write fiction to actually getting a book published. — Cynthia Kadohata

My sister and I practiced our howling and barking so we would be able to talk to our dogs if our mother ever let us get any. — Cynthia Kadohata

I cried and cried. But then I had to stop. One thing about me was that when I was having a serious wish session, I tried never to wish impossible wishes. I might have wished for sixteen crayons instead of eight, but even when I was little, I never wished for a thousand crayons, because I knew a thousand different crayons did not exist. So on that forty-ninth day I did not wish Lynn could be alive again, because I knew she was gone. — Cynthia Kadohata

In 1982, when I was almost 26 years old, I decided I wanted to write fiction. I'd majored in journalism in college, and I'd always assumed I would write nonfiction. — Cynthia Kadohata

Watch out for life ... It's harder than it looks. — Cynthia Kadohata

But for some reason, those rocks made lonely feel good. Those clouds made you dream big. Not big like you could make a lot of money or like you could have a good job. Bigger than those things. It was complicated. I mean, big like you were part of the sky, which also made you feel small. — Cynthia Kadohata

Here at the sea
especially at the sea
I could hear my sister's voice in the waves: Kira-kira! Kira-kira! — Cynthia Kadohata

I know a lot about when I was a little girl, because my sister used to keep a diary. Today I keep her diary in a drawer next to by bed. I like to see how her memories were the same as mine, but also different. — Cynthia Kadohata

You feel almost a part of the wheat when you're sitting in a combine. — Cynthia Kadohata

Sometimes I thought about my future, because Lynn said I should. She said it was hard to tell at this point, but someday, if I didn't go to Africa to study animals, I might be a beautiful genius tennis player. I didn't worry about it one way or another. I didn't care if I was a genius or if I was pretty or if I was good in sports. I just liked to listen to Lynn and to talk to Bera-Bera and to eat rice candies. The lady who used to live down the street could take all of her top teeth out of her mouth. She wasn't allowed to eat chewy candy. I could eat any kind of candy I wanted because I still had my baby teeth. If they rotted, I would simply grow more teeth. That was pretty great. — Cynthia Kadohata

The blue of the sky is one of the most special colors in the world, because the color is deep but see-through both at the same time. — Cynthia Kadohata

The thing about luck is that it's like a fever. You can take fever meds and lie in bed and drink chicken broth and sleep seventeen hours in a row, but basically your fever will break when it wants to break. — Cynthia Kadohata

When she first died, I felt sorry about all the pills I'd given that made her feel so miserable. But now I didn't feel so many regrets. Lynn wanted her life. I thought she was willing to suffer if she could still taste her food, if she could still talk about the sea, if she could still feel a breeze across her face, and even if she still could argue with her crazy sister! — Cynthia Kadohata

I love writing about people on the road. — Cynthia Kadohata

The jungle changes a man. — Cynthia Kadohata

I was worried that her spirit was watching me every time I cried. I was worried that if she saw me crying, she would be very unhappy and maybe she wouldn't be able to leave the earth the way she was supposed to. So even though I wanted her to keep watching me, I wished she would forget about me and never see my crying and never worry about me anymore, even if that meant I was now alone. — Cynthia Kadohata

Lynn said, "The blue of the sky is one of the most special colors in the world, because the color is deep but see-through both at the same time. What did I just say?"
"The sky is special."
"The ocean is like that too, and people's eyes."
She turned her head toward me and waited. I said, "The ocean and people's eyes are special too."
That's how I learned about eyes, sky, and ocean: the three special, deep, colored, see-through things. I turned to Lynnie. Her eyes were deep and black, like mine. — Cynthia Kadohata

Why would a book in which hardly anything happened for most of the time eat at me so much? It was the weirdest thing — Cynthia Kadohata

Suddenly, Mr. Parker's shoulders drooped and he gave up, mumbling, Happy wife, happy life. — Cynthia Kadohata

On the forty-ninth day after Lynn's death I opened all the windows in the alcove, even though it was raining. I closed my eyes and tried to feel Lynn's spirit. A leaf suddenly fell off the magnolia tree and flew in the wind and hit the screen right in front of me. I believe that leaf was a sign from Lynn. — Cynthia Kadohata

Nothing wrong with gullible. How you be happy if not gullible? — Cynthia Kadohata

It sounded so weird when people called shoyu "soy sauce." It made it sound like Tabasco or something instead of the clean and perfect thing that it was. — Cynthia Kadohata

My sister had taught me to look at the world that way, as a place that glitters, as a place where the calls of the crickets and the crows and the wind are everyday occurrences that also happen to be magic. — Cynthia Kadohata

At the time I was writing 'Weedflower,' my friend Naomi Hirahara was writing a book about Japanese-American flower farmers. She knew quite a few elderly farmers and put me in touch with four or five of them who had been in camps during WWII. Some, like my father, were reluctant to talk about their experiences. — Cynthia Kadohata

Back in the car she said, "I think I die this year, maybe this month." "I die first," Jiichan replied. "Japanese women live to nineties." "I die first! You eat many mandarin orange as child. They make you live longer. Vitamin C." "You drink more green tea. You live longer. — Cynthia Kadohata

And yet we couldn't leave
it was if the rocks were holding us there. I mean, they were only rocks. But for some reason, those rocks made lonely feel good. — Cynthia Kadohata

I felt like I didn't understand a single thing in the whole world. I didn't understand a single person. I didn't even understand myself. — Cynthia Kadohata

You could see the roads crisscrossing over the fields. When cars went by, far away, the beams were so bright they seemed to be ropes of light pulling the cars behind. — Cynthia Kadohata

I almost never slept deeply anymore
as soon as she said my name, I always sat up immediately, no matter how tired I was. — Cynthia Kadohata

Loneliness flooded his whole body like it was a physical sensation, not merely a feeling. Like it was a liquid that had replaced his blood and flowed inside his veins as his heart pumped it through. — Cynthia Kadohata

It was hard to stay angry when I felt so sad. I would rather have felt angry, but instead, all I could do was sob. Even though people had been coming over all day, the house seemed so lonely that I couldn't stand it.
The room grew somewhat dimmer. I didn't move as it grew dimmer still. Then, with a start, I hurried outside and ran to the alley in back of our house. Through a break between the buildings, I saw that the sun hung low over the horizon. I watched it until it started to hide between two trees in the distance. Then I climbed on a car and watched until only half of the sun was visible, and then a quarter, and then I felt a huge sickening panic inside of me and ran as hard as I could to a ladder I saw down the alley. I rushed up the ladder and climbed on the roof of somebody's garage. I saw the sun again, a quarter of it, and then a slice, and then it disappeared, the last time ever that the sun would set on a day my sister had lived. — Cynthia Kadohata

My mother did not think mustaches were feminine. I don't know why. — Cynthia Kadohata

I didn't care if I was a genius or if I was pretty or if I was good in sports. I just liked to listen to Lynn and to talk to Bera-Bera and to eat rice candies. — Cynthia Kadohata

If you hated white people, they would just hate you back, and nothing would change in the world; and if you didn't hate them after the way they treated you, you would end up hating yourself, and nothing would change that way, either. So it was no good to hate them, and it was no good not to hate them. So nothing changed. — Cynthia Kadohata

I hate thinking about writer's block! I don't have writer's block much, knock on wood, but if I do, I think it's usually because I haven't done enough research and am therefore unable to create a fully realized world. — Cynthia Kadohata