Natsuo Kirino Quotes

#1. I suppose I'm the one responsible for destroying myself.

Natsuo Kirino

#2. I'm still afraid of being totally honest. I'm more afraid of this than dying.

Natsuo Kirino

#3. A crime is like a crack in reality, and it is the author's role to explore those cracks. As a writer, I like to see how they impinge on people.

Natsuo Kirino

#4. Bye-bye. I'm off on a journey to the real world. 'Cause within this meta-reality what's real is this - my death.

Natsuo Kirino

#5. A women who does not know herself has no choice other than to live with other people's evaluations.

Natsuo Kirino

#6. Men live by rules they've made for themselves. And among those rules is one specifying that women are merely commodities for men to possess. A daughter belongs to her father, a wife to her husband. A woman's own desires present obstacles for men and are best ignored.

Natsuo Kirino

#7. I was frightened by the optimism of adults, their stupid trust in science to treat a troubled heart. Afraid of their obsession with believing they have to treat troubled kids. I just wanted them to leave me alone, so how come they didn't get it? But that's the way it always is.

Natsuo Kirino

#8. It's a very confusing experience living as a woman in Japan. If your husband is white-collar, the wife is blue. Even if you marry a person of status, the wife inevitably remains a rung below.

Natsuo Kirino

#9. Friends are a weird thing. It seems like they know all about you, but then they don't understand you at all.

Natsuo Kirino

#10. And then there was her face: her white skin, her brown eyes, and her expression, so soft and beautiful; she looked as though she were constantly getting ready to ask a question. Even an immaculately crafted doll could not have been as lovely.

Natsuo Kirino

#11. For a girl, appearance can be a powerful form of oppression. No matter how intelligent a girl may be, no matter her many talents, these attributes are not easily discerned. Brains and talent will never stand up against a girl who is clearly physically attractive.

Natsuo Kirino

#12. When stones lying warm in the sun were turned over, they exposed the cold, damp earth underneath; and that was where Masako had burrowed deep. There was no trace of warmth in this dark earth, yet for a bug curled up tight in it, it was a peaceful and familiar world.

Natsuo Kirino

#13. One of my books, 'Rain Falling on My Face,' earned me the 39th Edogawa Ranpo prize. It's a very prestigious literary prize in Japan, mostly for mysteries and thrillers.

Natsuo Kirino

#14. It wasn't so much that I was afraid of the place itself, but I was afraid of the creatures who masqueraded as people.

Natsuo Kirino

#15. You know," she murmured, "we're all heading straight to hell."
"Yes," said Masako, giving her a bleak look. "It's like riding downhill with no brakes."
"You mean, there's no way to stop?"
"No, you stop all right - when you crash.

Natsuo Kirino

#16. The living mourn the dead for a time but they forget about them as days pass. The living are so selfish, so spoilt, so taken with the very act of living that they don't remember long.

Natsuo Kirino

#17. In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water.

Natsuo Kirino

#18. A woman who does not know herself has no choice other than to live with other people's evaluations. But no one can adapt perfectly to public opinion. And herein lies the source of their destruction.

Natsuo Kirino

#19. But it did seem that the thing we are most proud of and the thing we are most ashamed of are but the front and back of the same coin.

Natsuo Kirino

#20. So something that never should have happened did, all because of my thoughts and actions. A clear-cut cause-and-effect relationship. I was the one who caused it, and I should probably get the death penalty. Or maybe what I should say is I'm the one who pronounced the death sentence on myself

Natsuo Kirino

#21. I decided then and there I was never going to have kids.

Natsuo Kirino

#22. I'm this superphilosophical kind of person. Stuck in a prison of abstract ideas and overpowering emotions, I have this personality that makes it really hard to survive.

Natsuo Kirino

#23. The thing I don't like about detective stories is looking for criminals.

Natsuo Kirino

#24. I started writing juvenile novels around 1985. I never really thought of it as a career, but more as a way to make a living.

Natsuo Kirino

#25. Most of the kids I know read only manga, but I prefer novels. Novels are closer to real life than manga, it's like they show you the real world with one layer peeled away, a reality you can't see otherwise.

Natsuo Kirino

#26. Kazue's journals depict an absolutely sublime struggle, the struggle between an individual and the rest of the world. Kazue lost the battle, ended up completely alone, and died hungry for some measure of kindness from another person. Don't you think it's a sad story?

Natsuo Kirino

#27. And what if, in order to keep on living, I have to continue to accept myself?

Natsuo Kirino

#28. Kids lose their trust in the parents they love, but still accept them, so they end up not trusting themselves anymore.

Natsuo Kirino

#29. Let's face it: the world is twisted. And rotten.

Natsuo Kirino

#30. The pain of being treated like a mere object. And a sense that this pain would turn into pleasure.

Natsuo Kirino

#31. Loneliness. Sometimes that awful feeling causes you to do something stupid.

Natsuo Kirino

#32. I'm happy to be told that I am beautiful, but I don't gain anything from that.

Natsuo Kirino

#33. You see, natural beauty creates such excitement that the existence of the weight is negated. And once it is negated, the heavier it is to bear.

Natsuo Kirino

#34. I first thought about becoming a writer after the age of 30, which is rather late, I'd say. In my 20s, I wasn't especially good at anything, and I didn't have a lot of experiences. I was just a young woman without a good job.

Natsuo Kirino

#35. I was in a self-induced depression. Welcome to me Real World.

Natsuo Kirino

#36. If the old man looked at straight lines to keep his act together, I was going to stare at curved lines and go down in flames.

Natsuo Kirino

#37. My talent was the uncompromising ability to feel spite.

Natsuo Kirino

#38. [..] and there are tons of people I hate so much that I wouldn't mind taking them out. But killing them wouldn't get me anywhere - that's the conclusion I always come to. If I'm going to pay for it in the end, I might as well let them live.

Natsuo Kirino

#39. Our gods did not come to us in any specific form, but we held them in our hearts and understood them in our own way.

Natsuo Kirino

#40. For research, I like to go to the location of the places in the novels. The first thing that I do is involve my senses: I notice the smells; I open the trash cans and look at what people have thrown away.

Natsuo Kirino

#41. Maybe what I want is to cut all ties with everybody. The thread or something that keeps me connected to the world, the worthless proof that I exist.

Natsuo Kirino

#42. If you say I hide things because I'm shy, that can't be right. I've finally realized it's for a different reason
that I don't want to see the darkness that lies in my heart

Natsuo Kirino

#43. I don't know if foreigners will take to my novels or not. It may be that my books appeal only to a particular gender or age group rather than convey a more universal appeal.

Natsuo Kirino

#44. All I want is for someone to understand me before I die. With death staring me in the face, I finally understand the reason novelists write books: before they die they want somebody, somewhere, to understand them.

Natsuo Kirino

#45. In Japan, full-time homemakers have no economic power of their own, and they socially lead a faceless, anonymous existence.

Natsuo Kirino

#46. If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die

Natsuo Kirino

#47. This didn't make me sad exactly - it was more a feeling that my own world was too simple, too smooth, too boring and worthless. The most I could do was have another name, Ninna Hori.

Natsuo Kirino

#48. Was it my lot in life to stand forever on heaven's shores watching the glittering swirl of celestial bodies on the other side?

Natsuo Kirino

#49. 'Out' was my real breakthrough, the novel that became a hit in Japan and sold a lot of books, so it was sort of an obvious choice for being the first book to be translated into English.

Natsuo Kirino