A Personal Matter Quotes

“One day Bird had approached his father with this question; he was six years old: Father, where was I a hundred years before I was born? Where will I be a hundred years after I die? Father, what will happen to me when I die? Without a word, his young father had punched him in the mouth, broke two of his teeth and bloodied his face, and Bird forgot the fear of death.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“…I kept trying to run away. And I almost did. But it seems that reality compels you to live properly when you live in the real world.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“In this age of ours it's hard to say with certainty that having lived was better than not having been born in the first place.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“More often than not he finds what he is looking for, and it destroys him.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Right now you're about the least attractive Bird I've ever seen...But I'll sleep with you just the same. I haven't been fastidious about morality since my husband committed suicide; besides, even if you intend to have the most disgusting kind of sex with me, I'm sure I'll discover something genuine in no matter what we do.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Bird’s mother-in-law sat quite still, the world’s most forlorn ventriloquist.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Kafka, you know, wrote in a letter to his father, the only thing a parent can do for a child is to welcome it when it arrives.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“I’m the one who’d like to send a telegram, AM RATHER IN TROUBLE—but addressed to whom?”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Once a person has been poisoned by self-deception, he can't make decisions about himself as neatly as all that.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“You’re right about this being limited to me, it’s entirely a personal matter. But with some personal experiences that lead you way into a cave all by yourself, you must eventually come to a side tunnel or something opens on a truth that concerns not just yourself but everyone. And with that kind of experience at least the individual is rewarded for his suffering. Like Tom Sawyer! He had to suffer in a pitch-black cave, but at the same time he found his way out into the light he also found a bag of gold! But what I’m experiencing personally now is like digging a vertical mine shaft in isolation; it goes straight down to a hopeless depth and never opens on anybody else’s world. So I can sweat and suffer in that same dark cave and my personal experience won’t result in so much as a fragment of significance for anybody else. Hole-digging is all I’m doing, futile, shameful hole-digging; my Tom Sawyer is at the bottom of a desperately deep mine shaft and I wouldn’t be surprised if he went mad!”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“They gave the impression of unnaturally halted motion, like film caught in a projector.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Anyway, I wasn’t asleep; if I nap during the day I can never get to sleep at night. I was thinking about the pluralistic universe.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Once a person has been poisoned by self-deception, he can't make decisions about himself as neatly as all that," Himiko said, elaborating her friend's terrific prophecy; "You won't get a divorce Bird. You'll justify yourself like crazy, and try to salvage your married life by confusing the real issues. A decision like divorce is beyond you now, Bird, the poison has gone to work. And you know how the story ends? Not even your own wife will trust you absolutely, and one day you'll discover for yourself that your entire private life is in the shadow of deception and in the end you'll destroy yourself. Bird, the first signs of self-destruction have appeared already!"
"But that's a blind alley! Leave it to you to paint the most hopeless future you can think of." Bird lunged at jocularity...”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“I wonder if it's suffering."
"What, our generation?"
"The baby!”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“في هذا العصر الخاص بنا من الصعب الجزم بالقول بأن كونك تحيا أفضل من كونك لم تولد من الأصل.”
― أوي كنزابورو, A Personal Matter

“After a blank of seven years it had taken him and his friend just seven minutes of conversation to eliminate everything worthy of their mutual curiosity.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“يبدو أن الواقع يرغمك على أن تحيا بشكل صحيح عندما تعيش عالم الواقع.. أقصد، حتى لو سعيت أن تقع تحت طائلة الخداع، تجد في مكان ما على طول الخط أن اختيارك الوحيد هو أن تتجنبه.”
― أوي كنزابورو, A Personal Matter

“You’re a comfort to me,” he said simply. “I mean to be. I bet you haven’t been comforted once since all this began. And that’s not good, Bird. At a time like this you must be careful to have someone comfort you almost more than you need at least once. Otherwise you’ll find yourself helpless when the time comes to summon up your courage and break away from chaos.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Evening was deepening, and the fever of early summer, like the temperature of a dead giant, had dropped completely from the covering air.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“The cul-de-sac was shaped like a stomach, a stomach with an obstruction in the duodenum.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“What if there was a last judgment! Under what category of the Dead could you subpoena, prosecute, and sentence a baby with only vegetable functions who died no sooner than he was born?”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“You’re trying to make something relative out of the irrevocability of your husband’s death by assuming another universe where he is still alive. But you can’t make the absoluteness of death relative, no matter what psychological tricks you use.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Bird had hoped at least to achieve a little humor in his vomiting style, but his actual performance was anything but funny.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“…Bird’s waking dream was harsh, the reverse face of the innocent dream that had ushered him into sleep, a thing armored in burrs that inspired anguish. Sleep for Bird was a funnel which he entered through the wide and easy entrance and had to leave by the narrow exit.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Can you tell me which is yours?" Standing at Bird's side, the nurse spoke as if she were addressing the father of the hospital's healthiest and most beautiful baby. But she wasn't smiling, she didn't even seem sympathetic; Bird decided this must be the standard intensive care ward quiz. Not only the nurse who had asked the question but two young nurses who were rinsing baby bottles beneath a huge water heater on the far wall, and the older nurse measuring powdered milk next to them, and the doctor studying file cards at a cramped desk against the smudgy poster-cluttered wall, and the doctor on this side of him, conversing with a stubby little man who seemed, like Bird, to be the father of one of the seeds of calamity gathered here—everybody in the room stopped what he was doing and turned in expectant silence to look at Bird.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“He was performing the role of the young husband who has been visited by sudden misfortune.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Gradually, as wine turns to vinegar, Bird's consternation turned to fear, aureoles of fear spread around his eyes like deep rings: he felt himself turning into a frightened monocle monkey.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“In silence, Bird reflected sadly on his wife's misconception of the nature of Swahili.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Enseguida sintió una convulsión interior y vomitó. Kikuhiko limpió el mostrador y le dio un vaso con agua. Bird permaneció con la mirada perdida y expresión aturdida. ¿Qué cosa intentaba defender del peligro que representaba el bebé monstruo? ¿Qué había de valioso en su propio interior para defender con tanto ahínco? La respuesta que halló lo dejó estupefacto: nada, menos que nada. Cero.
Bird se incorporó lentamente de la silla. Le dijo a Himiko:
—He decidido llevar al bebé nuevamente al hospital para que lo operen. No volveré a intentar huir por todos los resquicios”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter

“Like Apollinaire, my son was wounded on a dark and lonely battlefield that I have never seen, and he has arrived with his head in bandages. I'll have to bury him like a soldier who died at war.
Bird continued to cry.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter