Jun'ichiro Tanizaki Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 41 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki.
Famous Quotes By Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
It's odd, but even when I am in pain I have a sexual urge. Perhaps especially when I am in pain I have a sexual urge. Or should I say that I am more attracted, more fascinated by women who cause me pain? — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
But when Kaname asked: "Would you like to separate, then?" Misako answered: "Would you?" They knew that divorce was the solution, and yet neither had the courage to propose it, each was left face to face with his own weakness. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
[ ... ] we can't make a decision between being sad for a little while and being wretched for the rest of our lives. Or rather we've made the decision and have trouble finding the courage to carry it through. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
The ancients waited for cherry blossoms, grieved when they were gone, and lamented their passing in countless poems. How very ordinary the poems had seemed to Sachiko when she read them as a girl, but now she knew, as well as one could know, that grieving over fallen cherry blossoms was more than a fad or convention. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Whenever I sit with a bowl of soup before me, listening to the murmur that penetrates like the distant song of an insect, lost in contemplation of the flavours to come, I feel as if I were being drawn into a trance — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
If I've changed, I've changed."
"Have you really changed, or are you only making a show?"
"Making a show?"
"Yes."
" ... I don't really know. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
The older we get the more we seem to think that everything was better in the past. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
But does a decent man make promises just to please a woman? Isn't it more honest to refuse to?"
"I don't like that sort of honesty. It's not honesty, it's lack of steadiness. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Yet for better or worse we love things that bear the marks of grime, soot, and weather, and we love the colors and the sheen that call to mind the past that made them. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Children retain a great deal, and when they grow up they start going over things and rejudging them from a grownup's point of view. This must have been this way, and that was that way, they say. That's why you have to be careful with children - some day they grow up. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
If indeed "elegance is frigid," it can as well be described as filthy. There is no denying, at any rate, that among the elements of the elegance in which we take such delight is a measure of the unclean, the unsanitary. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
...she basked gratefully in the warmth of her husband's love — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
When I saw the illustration a new idea came to me. Might it not be possible to have Satsuko's face and figure carved on my tombstone in the manner of such a Bodhisattva, to use her as the secret model for a Kannon or Seishi? After all, I have no religious beliefs, any sort of faith will do for me; my only conceivable divinity is Satsuko. Nothing could be better than to lie buried under her image. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
If I know from the start that I'm going to be alone, I'm not lonely. It doesn't bother me. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
We delight in the mere sight of the delicate glow of fading rays clinging to the surface of a dusky wall, there to live out what little life remains to them. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
It is hard for one who has not had a similar experience to imagine the terror that still gripped Taeko and Mrs. Tamaki and Hiroshi, so intense a terror that afterwards it seemed almost funny. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
I know few greater pleasures than holding a lacquer soup bowl in my hands, feeling upon my palms the weight of the liquid and its mild warmth. The sensation is something like that of holding a plump newborn baby. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
For a woman who lived in the dark it was enough if she had a faint, white face -a full body was unnecessary. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
When she treads on my grave and feels as if she's trampling on that doting old man's bones, my spirit will still be alive, feeling the whole weight of her body, feeling pain, feeling the fine-grained velvety smoothness of the soles of her feet. Even after I'm dead I'll be aware of that. I can't believe I won't. In the same way, Satsuko will be aware of the presence of my spirit, joyfully enduring her weight. Perhaps she may even hear my charred bones rattling together, chuckling, moaning, creaking. And that would by no means occur only when she was actually stepping on my grave. At the very thought of those Buddha's Footprints modeled after her own feet she would hear my bones wailing under the stone. Between sobs I would scream: It hurts! It hurts! ... Even though it hurts, I'm happy - I've never been more happy, I'm much, much happier than when I was alive! ... Trample harder! Harder! — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
We Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce, then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty. But the progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot. From candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light - his quest for a brighter light never ceases, he spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
With lacquerware there is an extra beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth, when one gazes at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its colour hardly differing from that of the bowl itself. What lies within the darkness one cannot distinguish, but the palm senses the gentle movements of the liquid, vapour rises from within, forming droplets on the rim, and the fragrance carried upon the vapour brings a delicate anticipation ... a moment of mystery, it might almost be called, a moment of trance. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Her eyes, nose, hands, feet ... Each part was a supreme delicacy, and I was insatiable. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
For someone who writes as slowly as I do, each installment is a full day's work. Newspaper novels are painful ... Whether I like what I'm writing or not, whether I'm feeling inspired or not, I have to write an installment every day. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
I wanted to boast to everyone,"This woman is mine. Take a look at my treasure. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
After looking at myself in the mirror, I looked at Satsuko. I could not believe that we were creatures of the same species. The uglier the face in the mirror, the more extraordinarily beautiful Satsuko seemed. If that ugly face were only uglier, I thought regretfully, Satsuko would look even more beautiful. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
There are those who say that when civilization progresses a bit further transportation facilities will move into the skies and under the ground, and that our streets will again be quiet, but I know perfectly well that when that day comes some new device for torturing the old will be invented. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
When I was at the University I knew a law student named Yamada Uruu. Later he worked for the Osaka Municipal Office; he's been dead for years. This man's father was an old-time lawyer, or "advocate," who in early Meiji defended the notorious murderess Takahashi Oden. It seems he often talked to his son about Oden's beauty. Apparently he would corner him and go on and on about her, as if deeply moved. "You might call her alluring, or bewitching," he would say. "I've never known such a fascinating woman, she's a real vampire. When I saw her I thought I wouldn't mind dying at the hands of a woman like that!"
Since I have no particular reason to keep on living, sometimes I think I would be happier if a woman like Oden turned up to kill me. Rather than endure the pain of these half-dead arms and legs of mine, maybe I could get it over and at the same time see how it feels to be brutally murdered. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
And isn't it better really to leave things only hinted at? — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Perhaps I am already tired of life - I feel as if it makes no difference when I die. The other day at the Toranomon Hospital when they told me it might be cancer, my wife and Miss Sasaki seemed to turn pale, but I was quite calm. It was surprising that I could be calm even at such a moment. I almost felt relieved, to think that my long, long life was finally coming to an end. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
We Orientals find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and darkness which that thing provides. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
There are those who hold that to quibble over matters of taste in the basic necessities of life is an extravagance — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
But once you start doubting,it's hard to know what to believe. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki