Saigyo Quotes

#1. The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master.

Matsuo Basho

#2. He lied all the time even when there was no need to lie [ ... ] He needed a _history_, a sense of self. [Burnside on his father, p. 22]

John Burnside

#3. We need a theory that goes before the Big Bang, and that's String Theory. String Theory says that perhaps two universes collided to create our universe, or maybe our universe is butted from another universe leaving an umbilical cord. Well, that umbilical cord is called a wormhole.

Michio Kaku

#4. Morelli beeped his truck unlocked. "If you're looking for your rent-a-cop, I told Ranger you'd be with me this morning."
"Did he make you take a blood oath that you'd protect me?"
"He asked me if I had adequate health insurance.

Janet Evanovich

#5. I'm not good at selling laptops. I'm good at selling ideas.

Nicholas Negroponte

#6. Today's satori:
Such a change of mind would
Not exist without
My lifelong habit of having
My mind immersed in blossoms.

Saigyo

#7. Now, when you look at somebody, it's not simply, 'Are you like me or unlike me? Has your culture produced great artists? What are your rituals?' It's: 'Is your culture safe or not? Will it produce terrorists?'

Homi K. Bhabha

#8. I get it that some people just don't know what to make of me.

Hillary Clinton

#9. Returning to where
It used to see blossoms,
My mind, changed,
Will stay on at Yoshino ...
Home now, and see anew.

Saigyo

#10. Oh, gah, I've been slimed. (Jericho)
It's not slime. It's a baby kiss. (Delphine)
It's slime. (Zarek)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#11. I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.

Niall Ferguson

#12. Now seen ... now gone, The butterfly flits in and out Through fence-hung flowers; But a life lived so close to them I envy ... though it's here and gone.

Saigyo

#13. I want to find someone on the earth so intelligent that he welcomes opinions which he condemns.

John Jay Chapman

#14. The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

Igor Stravinsky

#15. The cherries' only fault: the crowds that gather when they bloom

Saigyo

#16. My writing process is a mix of research, personal experiences, washing the dishes, raising kids while thinking - then writing.

Jean Craighead George

#17. Beyond this life and
This world I'll have it til
My heart's content:
The bright moon that passed over
The horizon before I had my fill.

Saigyo

#18. I'd like to divide myself in order to see, among these mountains, each and every flower of every cherry tree.

Saigyo

#19. Tightly held by rocks
Through winter, the ice today
Begins to come undone:
A way-seeker also is the water,
Melting, murmuring from the moss.

Saigyo

#20. Whatever it is, / I cannot understand it, / although gratitude / stubbornly overcomes me / until I'm reduced to tears.

Saigyo

#21. Great virtues may draw attention from defects, they cannot sanctify them. A pebble surrounded by diamonds remains a common stone, and a diamond surrounded by pebbles is still a gem.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#22. In a solemn way, as if he had just thought of it, he said: The world is moving ahead. Yes, I said, it's moving ahead, but it's revolving around the sun.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#23. This place of mine never is entered by humans come for conversation, only by the mute moon's light shafts that slip in between the trees.

Saigyo

#24. Every single thing changes and is changing always in this world. Yet with the same light the moon goes on shining.

Saigyo

#25. Last year, Yoshino,
I walked away bending branches
To point me to blossoms
Which now are everywhere and I can
Go where I've never been before.

Saigyo

#26. The mind for truth
Begins, like a stream, shallow
At first, but then
Adds more and more depth
While gaining greater clarity.

Saigyo

#27. Limitations gone: Since my mind fixed on the moon, Clarity and serenity Make something for which There's no end in sight.

Saigyo

#28. Once upon uh time, Ah never 'spected nothin', Tea Cake, but bein' dead from the standin' still and tryin' tuh laugh. But you come 'long and made somethin' outa me. So Ah'm thankful fuh anything we come through together." "Thanky, Ma'am.

Zora Neale Hurston