Shimamura Quotes & Sayings

Beauty is equal parts flesh and imagination: we imbue it with our dreams, saturate it with our longings. — Nancy Etcoff

The window of the waiting-room was clear for an instant as the train started to move. Komako's face glowed forth, and as quickly disappeared. It was the bright red it had been in the mirror that snowy morning, and for Shimamura that color again seemed to be the point at which he parted with reality. — Yasunari Kawabata

It is precisely because our present life is so inseparably linked with desire that we must make use of desire's tremendous energy if we wish to transform our life into something transcendental. — Thubten Yeshe

America is not fighting to win a war. We are fighting to give an application to an old Greek proverb, which is that the purpose of war is not to annihilate an enemy but to get him to mend his ways. And we are confident we can get the enemy to mend his. — Arthur Goldberg

I'm a 'tweener,' man! I couldn't march with Dr. King and them. And I'm too old to be a hip-hopper. But I've been granted honorary status in each generation ... I see my tongue as a bridge over which ideas can travel back and forth. — Michael Eric Dyson

She had very little money, but she wasn't afraid-there was only one place to go, and that was up. — Candace Bushnell

Some people are passionate about aisles, others about window seats. — Terry Jones

Years ago someone wrote [about me]: 'She characterizes Molly Weasley as a mother who is only at home looking after the children.' I was deeply offended, because I until a year before that had also been such a mother who was at home all the time taking care of her child [ ... ] What has lesser status and is more difficult than raising a child? And what is more important? — J.K. Rowling

I've gone on workout regimes, but I seem to have a system that is very resistant to changing. — Ben Whishaw

A spiritual path for the modern samurai, but in the service of the heart, not the dictatorship of the ego. — Vincent Thibault

In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted into a sort of symbolic world not of this world. Particularly when a light out in the mountains shone in the centre of the girl's face, Shimamura felt his chest rise at the inexpressible beauty of it. — Yasunari Kawabata

You're just gonna create somebody who is, I was gonna say, 'toying with his sexuality.' Pardon the pun. — Christine O'Donnell

But even more than her diary, Shimamura was surprised at her statement that she had carefully cataloged every novel and short story she had read since she was fifteen or sixteen. The record already filled ten notebooks.
"You write down your criticisms, do you?"
"I could never do anything like that. I just write down the author and the characters and how they are related to each other. That is about all."
"But what good does it do?"
"None at all."
"A waste of effort."
"A complete waste of effort," she answered brightly, as though the admission meant little to her. She gazed solemnly at Shimamura, however.
A complete waste of effort. For some reason Shimamura wanted to stress the point. But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence. — Yasunari Kawabata

The woman was silent, her eyes on the floor. Shimamura had come to a point where he knew he was only parading his masculine shamelessness, and yet it seemed likely enough that the woman was familiar with the failing and need not be shocked by it. He looked at her. Perhaps it was the rich lashes of the downcast eyes that made her face seem warm and sensuous. She shook her head very slightly, and again a faint blush spread over her face. — Yasunari Kawabata

I love the rain. It calms me down, somehow, soothes my reckless heartbeats. It's like chamomile tea for my soul. — Jodi Perkins

[Congress] and their cronies secure more than one hundred billion dollars in corporate welfare — Lawrence Lessig

Everyone had their own agenda. She just had to stop reacting emotionally: decipher the real motives for their behaviour without taking every word as a personal attack. — Abby McDonald

A feeling of nagging, hopeless impotence came over Shimamura at the thought that a simple misunderstanding had worked its way so deep into the woman's being. — Yasunari Kawabata

It was funny how you could still know little things about people, like where they kept their tin, even though you didn't know what they were thinking from one week to the next. — Nick Hornby

It is time to let America be America again. To return freedom to the people. To stand on our founding principles and reject the cynical politics of the Nanny State. — Rick Perry