Yoko Ogawa Quotes

#1. Math has proven the existence of God, because it is absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot prove it

Yoko Ogawa

#2. They say it'll be even hotter tomorrow. that's how we spend the summer. complaining about the heat.

Yoko Ogawa

#3. I was always watching you. This could have been a breathless declaration of love or a final farewell.

Yoko Ogawa

#4. Because he had been- and in many ways still was- such a brilliant man, he no doubt understood the nature of his memory problem. It wasn't pride that prevented him from asking for help but a deep aversion to causing more trouble than necessary for those of us who lived in the normal world.

Yoko Ogawa

#5. It was clear that he didn't remember me from one day to the next. The note clipped to his sleeve simply informed him that it was not our first meeting, but it could not bring back the memory of the time we had spent together.

Yoko Ogawa

#6. Someone once wrote that worrying is the hardest thing about being a parent.

Yoko Ogawa

#7. I wondered why ordinary words seemed so exotic when they were used in relation to numbers. Amicable numbers or twin primes had a precise quality about them, and yet they sounded as though they'd been taken straight out of a poem.

Yoko Ogawa

#8. It seemed as though the secret of the universe had miraculously appeared right here at our feet, as though God's notebook had opened under our bench.

Yoko Ogawa

#9. A problem isn't finished just because you've found the right answer.

Yoko Ogawa

#10. When we grow up, we find ways to hide our anxieties, our loneliness, our fear and sorrow. But children hide nothing, putting everything into their tears, which they spread liberally about for the whole world to see.

Yoko Ogawa

#11. I was afraid that if she went on much longer, her fingers would scrape away my skin, rip my flesh, crush my bones. The pillow was damp with saliva, and I wanted to scream.

Yoko Ogawa

#12. He had a special feeling for what he called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers. This gave us confidence even when our best efforts came to nothing.

Yoko Ogawa

#13. Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort.

Yoko Ogawa

#14. I'm sure it must have been even more wonderful then, when we were young and knew nothing about the pain of growing up.

Yoko Ogawa

#15. He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world

Yoko Ogawa

#16. If he had attacked me outright, I might have been able to defend myself. Instead, he exposed my secret as if offering himself to me. I was left mute, listening to my heart pounding in my chest.

Yoko Ogawa

#17. The door that would not open no matter how hard you pushed, no matter how long you pounded on it. The screams no one heard. Darkness, hunger, pain. Slow suffocation. One day it occurred to me that I needed to experience the same suffering he had.

Yoko Ogawa

#18. He preferred smart questions to smart answers.

Yoko Ogawa

#19. -Excuse me,- I said, but my voice seemed to disappear into the dark.
It was my body. In this gloomy, cramped box, I had eaten poison plants and died, hidden away from prying eyes.
Crouching down at the door, I wept. For my dead self.

Yoko Ogawa

#20. The blades touched my abdomen. A cold shock ran through me, and my head began to spin. If he had pressed just a bit harder, the scissors might have pierced my soft belly. The skin would have peeled back, the fat beneath laid bare. Blood would have dripped on the bedspread.

Yoko Ogawa

#21. Your body falling through space touches the deepest part of me.

Yoko Ogawa

#22. Still, being alone doesn't mean you have to be miserable. In that sense it's different from losing something. You've still got yourself, even if you lose everything else. You've got to have faith in yourself and not get down just because you're on your own.

Yoko Ogawa

#23. It was as if a tiny crack had opened somewhere in him and was growing, tearing him to pieces. If he had simply been angry, I might have found a way to calm him, but I had no idea how to put him back together once he came apart.

Yoko Ogawa

#24. Why was everyone dying? They had all been so alive just yesterday.

Yoko Ogawa

#25. So, a great Indian teacher of mathematics discovered the zero written in God's notebook, and, thanks to him, we can now read many more pages in the notebook. Is that it?

Yoko Ogawa

#26. Are you just going to stand there frying hamburgers while your child could be dying in a fire?

Yoko Ogawa

#27. Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won't find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions.

Yoko Ogawa

#28. He discounted the value of his own efforts, and seemed to feel that anyone would have done the same.

Yoko Ogawa

#29. Are all things quantifiable, and all numbers fraught with poetic possibility?

Yoko Ogawa

#30. The room was filled with a kind of stillness. Not simply an absence of noise, but an accumulation of layers of silence ...

Yoko Ogawa

#31. I needed this eternal truth [...] I needed the sense that this invisible world was somehow propping up the visible one, that this one, true line extended infinitely, without width or area, confidently piercing through the shadows. Somehow, this line would help me find peace.

Yoko Ogawa

#32. Root always showed amazing insight when it came to the Professor.

Yoko Ogawa

#33. The mathematics stacks were as silent and empty as ever - apparently no one suspected the riches hidden there.

Yoko Ogawa

#34. The waves of regret were gentle, but I knew they would ripple on forever.

Yoko Ogawa

#35. It's like copying truths from God's notebook, though we aren't always sure where to find this notebook or when it will be open.

Yoko Ogawa

#36. The desires of the human heart know no reason or rules.

Yoko Ogawa