Quotes & Sayings About Tokyo

She had come out tonight because she believed there had to be a present tense, somewhere, and she'd followed Gav and Barnesy because she'd hoped they knew where it was. Is. And they'd dragged her to yet another haunted house. Where was the now? In bloody America, probably, apart from the bit that Tucker lived in, or in bloody Tokyo. In any case, it was somewhere else. How could people who didn't live in bloody America or bloody Tokyo stand it, all that swimming around in the past imperfect? — Nick Hornby

No,"Ito said gently, "we will not be needing soldiers. Accountants will do nicely."
Mutsuhito frowned. "How does one storm a castle with accountants ?"
"One buys it, sir. — Natasha Pulley

Shit, man, democracy failed before it started.

Who thought it was a good idea to let the masses of fucktards decide anything?

[Guess I've got more faith in people.]

People? The election of 2044 -- Curls Bellberry, a boy band presidency on the platform that the Earth is flat and that he'd nuke New York to save Social Security. There's a good reason he was the last president.

Problem with letting people pick a leader is they gravitate towards confident sociopaths no matter how stupid they are.

It's the perception of qualification that fools people.

At least by having corporate executives rule us we get folks who are good at business.

Life hurts, the world is fucked, and that's not going to change. . . — Rick Remender

AI will begin as Artificial Idiocy. Who cares if a computer can play chess or take control of cyberspace? Can it trash Tokyo, huh, huh? — Hal Duncan

These wafers had entered the mythology of the company, including their names: Tunguska, Vesuvius, Tokyo. The Vesuvius wafer put you on the Bay of Naples at 7:00 a.m. on August 24, A.D. 79, just before burning ash killed everyone. Tunguska left you in Siberia in 1908, just before the giant meteor struck, causing a shock wave that killed every living — Michael Crichton

If you go to Tokyo, I think it becomes very obvious that there's this almost seamless mixture of popular culture and Japanese traditional culture. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could achieve their aim, war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well to read this book and ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an air attack with conventional weapons. On the night of March 9th, 1945, an air attack on Tokyo by American heavy bombers, using incendiary and high explosive bombs, caused the death of 83,793 people. The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 71,379 people. So it goes. — Kurt Vonnegut

Although North Korea's position differs (from Tokyo's), Japan's basic stance remains unchanged ? to seek sincere responses from the North Korean side to resolve the abduction and nuclear issues, — Junichiro Koizumi

The overriding sense of Tokyo ... is that it is a city devoted to the new, sped up in a subtle but profound way: a postmodern science-fiction story set ten minutes in the future. — David Rakoff

New York has made me so paranoid, too. Whenever I visit another city, I always act like I'm from there, so the cab driver doesn't rip me off. I'm always like, "Yeah, it's good to be back home. Back here where I grew up. Yeah. Here in Tokyo ... Uh, driver, I need to go to my old stomping grounds. That would be the Holiday Inn. And the address appears to be the pound sign." — Jim Gaffigan

Historically, and notably in the 1905 Russo-Japanese war, the Japanese army's conduct towards defeated enemies had been characterised by mercy. The ruling Tokyo "control group" changed all that, instilling a culture of ruthlessness indistinguishable from barbarism into its armed forces; in 1934 the Ministry of War published a pamphlet which ennobled conflict as "the father of creation and mother of culture. Rivalry for supremacy does for the state what struggle against adversity does for the individual." The Allies now began to discover the significance of this merciless vision for those who fell into enemy hands. Before — Max Hastings

Flying from the United States to Tokyo takes approximately as long as law school. — Dave Barry

When the farthest corner of the globe has been conquered
technologically and can be exploited economically; when any incident you like, in any place you like, at any time you like, becomes
accessible as fast as you like; when you can simultaneously "experience" an assassination attempt against a king in France and a symphony concert in Tokyo; when time is nothing but speed, instantaneity, and simultaneity, and time as history has vanished from all
Being of all peoples; when a boxer counts as the great man of a
people; when the tallies of millions at mass meetings are a triumph;
then, yes then, there still looms like a specter over all this uproar the
question: what for? - where to? - and what then? — Martin Heidegger

I wander though China. Without ever having boarded a plane. My travels take place here in the Tokoyo subways, in the backseat of a taxi ... all of a sudden this city will start to go. In a flash, the buildings will crumble. Over the Tokyo streets will fall my China, like ash, leaching into everything it touches. Slowly, gradually, until nothing remains. No, this isn't a place for me. — Haruki Murakami

It's as if Japanese men, all to aware that deep inside they'd like to stomp Tokyo flat, breathe fire, and do truly terrible and disgusting things to women, have built themselves the most beautiful of prisons for their rampaging ids. Instead of indulging their fantasies, they focus on food, or landscaping, or the perfect cup of tea
or a single slab of o-toro tuna
letting themselves go only at baseball games and office parties. — Anthony Bourdain

I've published one book before, and now I'm writing a book of essays and stories about life in Tokyo. And I have one book coming out in May in Germany, about fitness. — Franka Potente

I'm not afraid to look like a big, hairy, smelly, foreign devil in Tokyo, though I do my best not to, I really do. — Anthony Bourdain

A Belgian journalist, struggling to describe the scene, had said that it resembled a cross between a permanent mass wake, an ongoing grad night for at least a dozen subcultures unheard of before the disaster, the black market cafes of occupied Paris, and Goya's idea of a dance party (assuming Goya had been Japanese and smoked freebase methamphetamine, which along with endless quantities of alcohol was clearly the Western World's substance of choice). It was, the Belgian said, as though the city, in its convolsion and grief, had spontaneously and necessarily generated this hidden pocket universe of the soul, its few unbroken windows painted over with black rubber aquarium paint. There would be no view of the ruptured city. As the reconstruction began around it, it had already become a benchmark in Tokyo's psychic history, an open secret, an urban legend. — William Gibson

Walking the streets of Tokyo with Hawking in his wheelchair ... I felt as if I were taking a walk through Galilee with Jesus Christ [as] crowds of Japanese silently streamed after us, stretching out their hands to touch Hawking's wheelchair ... The crowds had streamed after Einstein [on Einstein's visit to Japan in 1922] as they streamed after Hawking seventy years later ... They showed exquisite choice in their heroes ... Somehow they understood that Einstein and Hawking were not just great scientists, but great human beings. — Freeman Dyson

It's not because we can't take vengeance that we should feel sorry. The real reason to feel sorry... is when one is hung up on revenge and can't live their own life. — Sui Ishida

I met John Lennon and he was with his wife in Tokyo. I met him there. — Bryan Ferry

Human relationships are chemical reactions. If you have a reaction then you can never return back to your previous state of being. — Sui Ishida

Tokyo was a place you could quite happily exist alone and be self-contained. It seemed to promise that it was better to be by yourself. — Olivia Sudjic

even a cracked pot has a lid that fits. — Hiromi Kawakami

If transportation technology was moving along as fast as microprocessor technology, then the day after tomorrow I would be able to get in a taxi cab and be in Tokyo in 30 seconds. — W. Daniel Hillis

Here in this ocean, in the midst of all this water, with the red flags on those distant buoys flapping in the sea breeze, I find myself unable to treat our house in Tokyo as anything but a dream. — Banana Yoshimoto

However, while it may be true that the open-air stalls did help get the economy going again to some degree and feed some of the hungry masses (government rationing being so inadequate that a Tokyo District Court judge who refused to eat anything purchased illegally died of malnutrition), the men who ran them were anything but altruistic. — Robert Whiting

I studied Japanese language and culture in college and graduate school, and afterward went to work in Tokyo, where I met a young man whose father was a famous businessman and whose mother was a geisha. He and I never discussed his parentage, which was an open secret, but it fascinated me. — Arthur Golden

Tokyo Heist is a fast-paced, exotic reading adventure, a story where The da Vinci Code meets the wildly popular manga genre! Author Diana Renn infuses protagonist Violet with plenty of chikara (power) and Renn's fresh, spot-on author's voice is irresistible. I couldn't put it down! — Alane Ferguson

A minute passes as we enter Little Tokyo. It's kind of similar to what you see in the movies, with a lot of signs in different languages with "engrish" translations underneath and those big red gates with the curved wood on top, whatever they're called. The passing people on the street are, understandably, largely of Asian descent.
... I get a couple looks, but I suspect it's 'cause my hair is a variety of shades not seen outside of an anime. — Vaughn R. Demont

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
Should you tell your mother something if it is important when she is talking to company? I am six.
GENTLE READER:
Yes, you should (after saying "Excuse me"). Here are some of the things that are important to tell your mother, even though she is talking to company:
"Mommy, the kitchen is full of smoke."
"Daddy's calling from Tokyo."
"Kristen fell out of her crib and I can't put her back."
"There's a policeman at the door and he says he wants to talk to you."
"I was just reaching for my ball, and the goldfish bowl fell over."
Now, here are some things that are not important, so they can wait until your mother's company has gone home:
"Mommy, I'm tired of playing blocks. What do I do now?"
"The ice-cream truck is coming down the street."
"Can I give Kristen the rest of my applesauce?"
"I can't find my crayons."
"When are we going to have lunch? I'm hungry. — Judith Martin

Now Sally plunged her abruptly into the full strangeness of this place, with its rot and randomness rooting towers taller than any in Tokyo, corporate obelisks that pierced the sooty lacework of overlapping domes. — William Gibson

If an angelic being fell from the sky and tried to live in this world of ours I think even they would commit many wrongs. — Sui Ishida

Joe Frazier's life didn't start with Ali. I was a Golden Gloves champ. Gold medal in Tokyo '64. Heavyweight champion of the world long before I fought Ali in the Garden. — Joe Frazier

But that's the thing about East Texas. Red dirt never quite washes out, and pine pollen is tenacious as original sin. You can leave East Texas, for Houston, for the Metroplex, for the Commonwealth, for New York, or Bonn or Tokyo or Kowloon; but you can never quite leave it behind. — Markham Shaw Pyle

As expected life isn't that sweet at all. When I came to Tokyo I thought I could achieve anything with my own two hands. It's not like that. To get something in these hands, I have to fight a horrible fight. But ... there's not much time to grab the things you want with your hands. Why is that? And more importantly what is that I want? — Ai Yazawa

I love Japan, and Tokyo is my favorite city. — Barry Eisler

'Robopocalypse' joins a proud tradition of techno-apocalyptic tales, stretching from high-flying Icarus, to Frankenstein's monster, and to many a giant radioactive creature who has crashed the streets of Tokyo. And then, of course, there's the Terminator. — Daniel H. Wilson

Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who've all longed and lost, who've all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you're not really any different from everyone else. — Maya Angelou

Love her he doesn't but the thought he puts
into that young woman
would launch a national product
complete with TV spots & skywriting
outlets in Bonn & Tokyo
I mean it — John Berryman

One night in Tokyo we watched two Japanese businessmen saying good-night to each other after what had clearly been a long night of drinking, a major participant sport in Japan. These men were totally snockered, having reached the stage of inebriation wherein every air molecule that struck caused them to wobble slightly, but they still managed to behave more formally than Americans do at funerals. — Dave Barry

Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

It's hard not being able to see you, but my life in Tokyo would be a lot worse if it weren't for you. — Haruki Murakami

Prior to 'Tokyo Drift,' the iconic perception of Asians in Hollywood films has been either the Kung Fu guy, the Yakuza guy or some technical genius. It used to be such a joke, to be laughed at rather than with. — Sung Kang

Tokyo cab drivers are all ex-kamikaze pilots. — Bob Hope

People want to feel good, be entertained, eat salty shit, and cum twice a week, and provided they do they'll stay quiet. — Rick Remender

I am no spy." "Then start being your own. If Tokyo's the frying pan, you may just have landed in the fire. — William Gibson

Shibuya is a trendy part of Tokyo where young people come to meet and have a good time. — Rebecca MacKinnon

I just played at a club in L.A. called the Baked Potato. It fits like 90 people. It's like playing somewhere in a basement in, like, Indiana or somewhere where all your friends show up. It's really fun and there's a very different energy to that than to play to 50,000 at a Tokyo baseball stadium. — Chad Smith

Having completed its conquest of California in 1844, the United States looked across the Pacific for new business opportunities. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo (then called Edo) Bay with four men-of-war, and handed over a letter for the Japanese emperor from the American president which began with the ominous words, 'You know that the United States of America now extend from sea to sea.' Denied an audience with the emperor, Perry retreated with subtle threats to return with more firepower if the Japanese did not agree to open their ports to American trade. They refused. He did as he said; and the Japanese succumbed. — Pankaj Mishra

McDonalds in Tokyo is a terrible revenge for Pearl Harbor. — S.I. Hayakawa

It is hot in Tokyo, it's humid, I'm tired, all of these backs are in front of you, I'm not going to make the team anyway so screw it. I remember going back and I called down to the desk. I was asking about some flights out of there. — Terrell Davis

I'm thinking about the end of civilization. We may not keep growing like we are now. There must be an end of civilization. That's what I did as a show at the Palais de Tokyo, the 33 scenarios of how this civilization ends. — Hiroshi Sugimoto

I can neither live with you. Nor without you. — Sui Ishida

I traveled the world ten times over doing something I never thought I'd do in a million years. I found myself in Tokyo, Japan. I (was in) a Dell Computer commercial, the first thing I had ever done, and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the green screens, I fell in love with (everything). The translator was explaining everything to me. It was a passion like I had never felt before. I came back and it took me five years to really accept that that was okay. — Drew Waters

I commuted to the prestigious Hibiya High School from my uncle's home in Tokyo. During the high school years, I developed an interest in chemistry, so upon graduation, I chose to take an entrance examination for the Department of Chemistry of the University of Kyoto, the old capital of Japan. — Susumu Tonegawa

In the Crusades, getting the Holy Land back was the goal, and any means could be used to achieve it. World War II was a crusade. The firebombing of Tokyo by Doolittle and the carpet bombing in Germany, especially by the British, showed that. — Stanley Hauerwas

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. — Kenzaburo Oe

You went back to Tokyo just about the time the autumn weather was deepening, so for a time I couldn't tell whether the hole that opened up inside me was from missing you or from the change of the season. — Haruki Murakami

Tokyo is too close up to see, sometimes. There are no distances and everything is above your head - dentists, kindergartens, dance studios. Even the roads and walkways are up on murky stilts. An evil-twin Venice with all the water drained away. — David Mitchell

I'd have a few on and off, but the commitment was always more on the girls' part than on mine, to be perfectly honest. So, I met a girl in Tokyo, on my Japanese tour, with whom I've been living ever since, very happily. Her name is Suchi. — Iggy Pop

He stomped away like a pint-sized Godzilla looking for Tokyo. — Julia Spencer-Fleming

Samurai are born to die.
Death is not a curse to be avoided
but the natural end of all life. Death is not eternal ... dishonor is. — Rick Remender

On the plane leaving Tokyo I'm sitting alone in back twisting the knobs on Etch-A-Sketch and Roger is next to me singing "Over the Rainbow" straight into my ear, things changing, falling apart, fading, another year, a few more moves, a hard person who doesn't give a fuck, a boredom so monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made by people you don't even know that it requires you to lose any sense of reality you might have once acquired, expectations so unreasonable you become superstitious about ever matching them. Roger offers me a joint and I take a drag and stare out the window and I relax for a moment when the lights of Tokyo, which I never realized is an island, vanish from view but this feeling only lasts a moment because Roger is telling me that other lights in other cities, in other countries, on other planets, are coming into view soon. — Bret Easton Ellis

"Naming Tokyo" kicked off at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in June, and it's going to travel to various art institutions for years to come. Every time it is shown, I'm developing the research and involving more and more people in it. The final conclusion of the work would eventually be to put up street signs in Tokyo with my names on them. — Aleksandra Mir

What comes from the heart will go to the heart — Renae Lucas-Hall

Walk around Tokyo and all you see are people trying to sell you something. Tell them okay and before you know you have bought something. Make the mistake of telling your address and now you're on a mailing list. Some old guy pats you on the shoulder and before you know what hit you you're in a hotel room. Stalkers' victims, the ones they kill, are always women. — Natsuo Kirino

When I think of Tokyo Story, yeah, it is like a novella. That doesn't mean it's not great. Some of my favorite Tolstoy works are his novellas. — Paul Auster

Tokyo is huge. Something like 15 million people live there, and my estimate is that at any given moment, 14.7 million of them are lost. — Dave Barry

Tokyo may have more money and Kyoto more culture; Nara may have more history and Kobe more style. But Osaka has the biggest heart. — Vikas Swarup

An amount of bot tox the size of the dot over this i would be enough to easily kill ten people. Bot tox is a nerve agent. It is one hundred thousand times more toxic than Sarin, the nerve gas that the Aum Shinrikyo sect released in the Tokyo subway. — Richard Preston

Tokyo Disneyland is an aspiring despot's wet dream. — Our Man In Abiko

I just gave them a little scare. A touch of psychological terror. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, true terror is the kind that men feel towards their imagination. (from Super-frog Saves Tokyo) — Haruki Murakami

It turns out that a Nobel is also followed by other recognitions, and perhaps the most unexpected of these is that the Japan Karate Association in Tokyo has now made me an honorary 7th-degree black belt, something that, given my athletic abilities, is even more unimaginable than being an Economic Sciences Laureate. — Alvin E. Roth

I'm going to gently scramble up your insides for you now, okey?~Rise,Tokyo Ghoul — Sui Ishida

A past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back ... The nation's marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit ... As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he [President Bush] is having it done for him, by proxy. Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon. — Keith Olbermann

It's not a secret family like I have a beautiful, gorgeous wife in Tokyo; I have another mom and dad. I'm the kid and I have another mom and dad in Atwater Village, Los Angeles; — John Hodgman

I think Tokyo is going to sink under water soon. All those stupid high-rise buildings will sink and maybe all the traffic will be gone. And everything will be peaceful and quiet. — Hayao Miyazaki

Maybe vagueness has been good for me. The word means two different things in Tokyo and Osaka, you know. In Tokyo it means stupidity, but in Osaka they talk about vagueness in a painting and in a game of Go. — Yasunari Kawabata

I am, indeed, pure Frog, but at the same time I am a thing that stands for a world of un-Frog. — Haruki Murakami

Wells recognized that these crude novels correctly foresaw modern warfare as aiming at the massive destruction of the physical structures of an enemy civilization and the terrorizing if not annihilating of its noncombatant population. His Martians anticipate with uncomfortable accuracy, for example, American bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, followed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and boastful proclamations of "shock and awe" tactics against Iraq. — H.G.Wells

I'm not going to protect you by being your shield or armor, but I'll be the dagger hidden below your pillow. — Sui Ishida

In 1600, Shakespeare's London was a city of 200,000 people. At the same time, there were already over a million in Tokyo. — Simon McBurney

Because, Mr.. Katagiri, Tokyo can only be saved by a person like you. And it's for people like you that I am trying to save Tokyo. — Haruki Murakami

Bill Clinton was for NAFTA. I heard him over in Tokyo he came out all said it was a great bill. Secretary Clinton was for it. She called it the gold standard when she was secretary of state. — Chris Matthews

I went to the Tokyo Film Festival in Japan because I love Japanese cinema. — Leslie Caron

I had an overwhelming sense of the lonliness of this city - a trillion souls in their bedrooms, high in the cliffs of windows. I thought of what was underneath it all - I thought of the electricty cables, steam, water, fire, subway trains and lava in the city's guts, the subterranean rumbling of trains and earthquakes. I thought of the dead souls from the war, concreted over. — Mo Hayder

I'm just a broken thing you're familiar with. — Rick Remender

You have an impeccable argument if you said that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo are food capitals. They have a maximum amount of great stuff to eat in the smallest areas. — Anthony Bourdain

You don't need to blame yourself just because you've hurt someone, just like when you're walking you can't really blame yourself to crush some ants... that's what being stronger ones means. — Sui Ishida

Mowrer and his family made it safely to Tokyo. His wife, Lillian, recalled her great sorrow at having to leave Berlin. "Nowhere have I had such lovely friends as in Germany," she wrote. "Looking back on it all is like seeing someone you love go mad - and do horrible things. — Erik Larson

But I'll do anything in my power to stop them from taking you away."
She took a shuddering breath, then let her eyes fall closed. "Promise?"
"Anything. As you said in Tokyo, we're meant to be together. — Scott Westerfeld

My brother then opened a tall man's shop in Tokyo. — Henny Youngman

Psychologically speaking (I'll only wheel out the amateur psychology just this once, so bear with me), encounters that call up strong physical disgust or revulsion are often in fact projections of our own faults and weaknesses. — Haruki Murakami

I love Tokyo, I've been several times. The first trip was just weird; it was a weird time. It was in the '90s, and it was different then. — Alison Mosshart

Long commutes and traffic jams once associated with older, established cities such as London, New York or Tokyo are spreading throughout the world's emerging economies. — William Clay Ford Jr.

From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea - written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo - "There is no substitute for victory!" — Douglas MacArthur

The Japanese tend to be far more co-operative and docile and group-oriented. It would be easier to get the entire population of Tokyo to wear matching outfits than to get any two randomly selected Americans to agree on pizza toppings. — Dave Barry

I think when we shot 'Tokyo Drift' I was a little too young to really understand what made Han who he is, and then I got older, and you start to make a little bit of money, and you realize that money will never buy you happiness. — Sung Kang

Fuck 'em. Call it whatever you want. Maybe it's just two people clinging to each other to stay alive. Maybe sometimes that's all love gets to be. And, maybe, if they hold onto each other long enough ... maybe something good finally happens. — Rick Remender