QUOTATIONS - QUOTES

".he had this view of things - that most activity was utter folly, his own included, and that his existence in the world made others nervous." (p. 35, Ishmael's thoughts)

"No law compelled them to take only these rear seats. They had done so instead because San Piedro required it of them without calling it a law." (p. 75, regarding the Japanese islanders in the courtroom)

"In America, she said, there was fear of death; here life was separate from Being. A Japanese, on the other hand, must see that life embraces death, and when she feels the truth of this she will gain tranquility." (p. 83, Mrs. Shigemura to Hatsue)

"The world was unreal, a nuisance that prevented him from focusing on this memory of that boy." (p. 154, Kabuo's thoughts)

"This is what his father had taught him: the grater the composure, the more revealed one was, the truth of one's inner life was manifest - a pleasing paradox. (p. 155, Kabuo's thoughts)

He knew himself privately to be guilty of murder, to have murdered men in the course of war, and it was this guilt - he knew no other word - that lived in him perpetually and that he exerted himself not to communicate. Yet the exertion itself communicated guilt, and he could see no way to stop it." (p. 155, Kabuo's thoughts)

".love went deep and meant life itself, but honor could not be turned from. He was not who he was if he didn't go to war, and would not be worthy of her." (p. 163, Kabuo to Hatsue)

"It was important for a person to act carefully, for every action, Hatsue explained, had consequences for the soul's future." (p. 172, Hatsue to Ishmael)

"We bend our heads, we bow and are silent, because we understand that by ourselves alone, we are nothing at all, dust in a strong wind, while the hakujin believes his aloneness is everything, his separateness is the foundation of his existence." (p. 201, Fujiko to Hatsue)

"And she thought she understood what she had long sought to understand, that she concealed her love for Ishmael Chambers not because she was Japanese in her heart be because she could not in truth profess to the world that what she felt for him was love at all." (p. 207, Hatsue's thoughts)

“...accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart” (p. 460).

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