Japanese Poetry Quotes & Sayings

Simply, if you're working with good material, then it's right there, and you don't have to try so hard as an actor; you don't have to do so much. Just let the material sit inside you and let it come out. Just say the words. That was the main thing that I learned from doing Aaron Sorkin's work - say the words, and everything else will happen. — Dule Hill

Knut, this is Jude. Remember I told you about him? He writes poetry." Knut looked my half-Japanese self up and down. "Haiku?" he guessed. "Gesundheit," I muttered sourly. — J.L. Merrow

Love and accept everyone for who they are, for where they are in life. That is compassion. — Kristi Bowman

I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry. — Lafcadio Hearn

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.
And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing.
What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don't force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don't understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day. — Ray Bradbury

While Elstir, at my request, went on painting, I wandered about in the half-light, stopping to examine first one picture, then another.
Most of those that covered the walls were not what I should chiefly have liked to see of his work, paintings in what an English art journal which lay about on the reading-room table in the Grand Hotel called his first and second manners, the mythological manner and the manner in which he shewed signs of Japanese influence, both admirably exemplified, the article said, in the collection of Mme. de Guermantes. Naturally enough, what he had in his studio were almost all seascapes done here, at Balbec. But I was able to discern from these that the charm of each of them lay in a sort of metamorphosis of the things represented in it, analogous to what in poetry we call metaphor, and that, if God the Father had created things by naming them, it was by taking away their names or giving them other names that Elstir created them anew. — Marcel Proust

To tell others that
It is a rumor
Will not do.
When your own heart asks
How will you respond? — Gosen Wakashu

Please do. It would make my fucking year to see you riding my cock, he says with a masculine groan, smirking at me. — Samantha Towle

You can lead a boy to college, but you cannot make him think. — Elbert Hubbard

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation. — Robert Morgan

But Ruby, my language of choice since NewBagel, was invented by a cheerful Japanese programmer, and it reads like friendly, accessible poetry. — Robin Sloan

Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in part true. — Lafcadio Hearn

Knowing that it is the earth we tread, we learn to tread carefully, lest it be rent open. Realizing that it is the heavens that hang above us, we come to fear the echoing thunderbolt. The world demands that we battle with others for the sake of our own reputation, and so we undergo the sufferings bred of illusion. While we live in this world with its daily business, forced to walk the tightrope of profit and loss, true love is an empty thing, and the wealth before our eyes mere dust. — Soseki Natsume

The law is an accumulation of tireless attempts to block a man's desire to change life into an instant of poetry. Certainly it would not be right to let everybody exchange his life for a line of poetry written with a splash of blood. But the mass of men, lacking valor, pass away their lives without ever feeling the least touch of such a desire. — Yukio Mishima

Love is about connecting yourself with the Universe and being a part of it. — Victoria Vorel

Pine trees rise through cloud
soar up into the blue skies,
bush clover spangled with dewdrops
sways in the autumn breeze;
As I dip cold, pure water
at the edge of the stream,
a solitary white crane
comes lolloping my way. — Baisao

On Hayao Miyazaki
I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.
"We have a word for that in Japanese," he said, "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."
Is that like the "pillow words" that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?
"I don't think it's like the "pillow word." He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, but if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb. — Roger Ebert

This rootless shifting east and west
I can't suppress a smile myself
but how else can I make
the whole world my home.
If any of my old friends
come around asking
say I'm down at the river
by the Second Fushimi Bridge. — Baisao

A critical ingredient which binds customers to a brand is trust — Bernard Kelvin Clive

Who can measure the love Christ felt for a lost world, as he hung upon the cross, suffering for the sins of guilty men? This love was immeasurable. It was infinite. — Ellen G. White

The River Mogami has drowned
Far and deep
Beneath its surging waves
The flaming sun of summer — Matsuo Basho

Everyone calls him Blockhead
No one sings his praises
Or takes him to heart ...
That is the kind of person
I want to be — Kenji Miyazawa

Japanese poetry does what poetry does everywhere: it intensifies and exalts experience. — Kenneth Rexroth

Haiku does not express emotion from the inside out by displaying the mind of a character. Haiku builds the emotional thrust, makes the artistic statement from the outside in, from the physical world to the mind of the reader. — Harley King

Great art projects a sense of inexhaustibility. In literature, particularly in poetry, this may be accomplished through ambiguity: Beneath each and every meaning that I can descry lie others, so that rereading holds out the prospect of new subtleties, inversions, secret codes and ineffabilities — William T. Vollmann

I silently wished to be a car-I was big enough to be one. I wanted to imagine myself purring every time Devin got inside me and took me for a ride. Unfortunately, all I could see was me drunk with chocolate smeared across my face singing the Transformer's intro "Robots in Disguise!" into Shannon's broken box fan. — Tabatha Vargo

To a Boy

Boy,
you are a hidden watering place under the trees
where, as the day darkens, gentle beasts with calm eyes
appear one after another.

Even if the sun drops flaming at the end of the fields where grass stirs greenly
and a wind pregnant with coolness and night-dew agitates your leafy bush,
it is only a premonition.

The tree of solitude that soars with ferocity,
crowned with a swirling night,
still continues in your dark place.

-Translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato — Mutsuo Takahashi

The purpose of life has eternal consequences — Sunday Adelaja

When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy. — Matsuo Basho

And they were deeply moved not so much by the poetry as by their sensitivity to poetry; not so much by the genius of the poem as by their wisdom in understanding the poem; not in knowing the poem but in knowing the poem demonstrated the higher side of themselves and of the Japanese spirit - — Richard Flanagan

It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese. — Lafcadio Hearn

The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry. — Lafcadio Hearn

Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out. — Ryokan

In my experience, the words "now just calm down" almost inevitably have the opposite effect on the person you are speaking to. — Elyn R. Saks

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations - there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science. — Santoka Taneda

Every country in the world loved the folklore of the West
the music, the dress, the excitement, everything that was associated with the opening of a new territory. It took everybody out of their own little world. The cowboy lasted a hundred years, created more songs and prose and poetry than any other folk figure. The closest thing was the Japanese samurai. Now, I wonder who'll continue it. — John Wayne

In the India I was growing up in, history wasn't really a wise career option. People would joke and say, 'History's okay, but what's your actual job?' I didn't come from a privileged background and couldn't afford to be irresponsible, so I did the pragmatic thing and did a MBA. — Amish Tripathi

When your heart burns with passion, and your faith is at it's peak, it is then when you have your life by the horns, and now when the preconceived desires in your dreams materialize. Believe beyond your minds eye and see the light, the energy that will fill your half full cup to the brim, and overflow with joyous life experiences. Think it, see it, and live it. Expand ... — Will Barnes

The Alexander Technique helped a long-standing back problem and to get a good night's sleep after many years of tossing and turning. — Paul Newman

Haiku is not a shriek, a howl, a sigh, or a yawn; rather, it is the deep breath of life. — Santoka Taneda

The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not. — Mark Twain