Top 31 Jun'ichiro Tanizaki Quotes
#2. 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
#3. The heart of mine is only one, it cannot be known by anybody but myself.
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#13. Her eyes, nose, hands, feet ... Each part was a supreme delicacy, and I was insatiable.
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. There are those who hold that to quibble over matters of taste in the basic necessities of life is an extravagance
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. The older we get the more we seem to think that everything was better in the past.
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
#23. [ ... ] 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. I wanted to boast to everyone,"This woman is mine. Take a look at my treasure.
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
#29. 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
#30. 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
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