Kei Nagai Quotes

Let your heart guide you and you face ruin. ~ Gamon Sakurai

The Spanish fleet was beautiful and terrifying. The great battleships were clouds of sail scudding before the wind while their xebecs and frigates ran with them like greyhounds coursing alongside huntsmen. ~ M. Kei

If you hear him beat that drum he will reveal something of himself to you, for what is a drumbeat, after all, other than the sound of a great hollowness, like death amplified ? ~ Kei Miller

Things that come with the fog: horseshoe crabs, tall ships, and wandering hearts. ~ M. Kei

The pen is mightier than the sword, for by the sword are mortal battles waged, but by the pen entire cultures swayed, eternal societies arrayed, and souls of men saved. ~ Ilyan Kei Lavanway

To know a man properly, you must know the shape of his hurt - the specific wound around which his person has been formed like a scab. ~ Kei Miller

In my family, there were Kei and Minoru and then there were the rest. Everyone in my family is very opinionated and everyone tried to join the debate. But by the time my turn came, there was nothing left to say. I couldn't keep pace, so I looked to do my own things. ~ Akira Mori

It don't take no great skill to write down a story. All you have to do is put one word after the next and you continue like that until it done. But it take a special skill to hear a story-to incline your ears toward what may seem like silence. For nothing in this world is silent, you just have to learn how to hear. ~ Kei Miller

The great philosophical question goes: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it make a sound? But this is a troubling question, exalting one kind of being above all others. What then of the ears of snakes, or wood frogs, or mice, or bugs? Do they not count? What then of grass, of stone, of earth? Does their witness not matter? If a man flies in Jamaica, and only the poor will admit to seeing it, has he still flown? (...) Always - always - there are witnesses. ~ Kei Miller

Perhaps events had their own way of ordering themselves , perhaps beginnings and endings always had coincidences no ordinary person could penetrate. In the flood of time, human beings were no more than flecks of grit, borne along by the flow. ~ Chan Ho-Kei

Use your strength, but always remember that any strength
may become a weakness. ~ Kateryna Kei

No, nothing in this world is as oppressive and debilitating as blood ties. Any other relationship – be it friend, lover, wife; be it obligatory or constraining or difficult – is something one has consciously entered into at some point. Only one's ties with parents and siblings are formed at birth and are unbreakable. ~ Kafū Nagai

Even if you fail or do something stupid, if you can laugh in the end, that's all that matters. ~ Kei Kanai

Know then that every heartbless
given is collected by Jah like mickle and muckle,
or like a basketful of cocoa, and comes back to you
like a dividend. ~ Kei Miller

Even captains were pawns to the lords of the sea, who moved them – and sacrificed them – wither they would. ~ M. Kei

People say that Nagasaki is famous for persecution and devastation, for it has known much in it's history. But Nagasaki is not the only place that has experienced both persecution and destruction The reason Nagasaki is famous, is because it is rebuilt, because it has always survived. ~ Takashi Nagai

Some days have more roads than others, and some roads more distance, so that when a woman complains how long the day is, maybe she is counting its roads rather than its hours. ~ Kei Miller

Now focus. 17° 59' 0" North, 76° 44' 0" West. Down there is the Caribbean, though not the bits you might have seen in a pretty little brochure. We are beyond the aquamarine waters, with their slow manatees and graceful sea turtles, and beyond the beaches littered with sweet almonds. We have gone inland. Notice the hills, how one of them carries on its face a scar - a section where bulldozers and tractors have sunk their rusty talons into its cheeks, scraped away the brush and the trees and left behind a white crater of marl. The eyesore can be seen from ten or more miles away. To the people who live in this valley, it feels as if they wear the scar on their own skin - as if a kind of ruin has befallen them. ~ Kei Miller

The smaller the world one lives in, the deeper and stronger their hatred can grow. It is like water poured into a dish. ~ Kei Ohishi

Whoever had designed her loved ships and knew the sea: he had designed her with his heart. ~ M. Kei

How much
have we not seen or felt or heard
because there was no word
for it -- at least no word we knew?
We speak to navigate ourselves
away from dark corners and we become,
each one of us, cartographers. ~ Kei Miller

Look, this isn't magic realism. This is not another story about superstitious island people and their primitive beliefs. No. You don't get off that easy. This is a story about people as real as you are, and as real as I once was before I became a bodiless thing floating up here in the sky. You might as well consider a more urgent question; not whether you believe this story or not, but whether this story is about the kinds of people you have never taken the time to believe in. ~ Kei Miller

Go to the mountains and meditate! If you stay in the hurly-burly of this world, you'll run around in circles without ever finding your way. You'll become the kind of person who just stamps and screams. But the blue mountains are immovable and the white clouds come and go. ~ Takashi Nagai

Out of all human emotions, none is more primitive, and has a longer lasting effect on the body, than hatred. ~ Kei Ohishi

While one lives in a foreign country, language's main function is as a means of self-protection and a weapon in one's fight with the world. You can't fight without a weapon. But perhaps its human instinct that makes it even more imperative to somehow express oneself, convey meaning, connect with others. ~ Iwaki Kei

After all, don't care how you want to sit there and deny the knowledge of River Mumma sitting on her rock - don't care how you deny the knowledge of fallen angels who can jump into your body as they please, or the knowledge of ancestors who sit beside your bed and watch when they not harkening on to the sounds of drumming - don't care how you deny any of it, all of it is still true. All of them things still exist, because them do not need the permission of your belief. ~ Kei Miller

This place was no freedom, and Massa Day was not done. Massa had only changed his name. He was no longer "Busha" or "Buckra" or "Massa". He was now "Boss" or "Miss" or "Sergeant." Sometimes Massa even changed his skin from white to black, making this whole freedom thing complicated. There was further to go; a longer journey ahead. ~ Kei Miller

Only the Arrow ran with the Ajax. ~ M. Kei

Oh, but once one has returned to the land of one's birth – there is no place more constricting – one's surroundings no longer permit such freedom, and one can no longer simply transcend the demands of social position. ~ Kafū Nagai

Our lives are of great worth if we accept with good grace the situation Providence places us in, and go on living lovingly. ~ Takashi Nagai

Sometimes hatred can even give unbelievable power to people. ~ Kei Ohishi

When Nick leaves our room, he leaves behind a dark thunder cloud. He has carried the shadow with him for so long that it has become a part of him and has settled in the shadows of the room. ~ Mariko Nagai

Luck often comes to those who are brave. ~ Kateryna Kei

Kei: Is there anything else you need while I'm here, Your Highness?
Cabot: No, but you can leave the sarcasm in there. ~ Stefne Miller

Reji kissed him again. "Maybe ... for now, healer. But later, I might need your
help."
"Oh? For a medical condition?"
"Yes. I have this really hard ... "
"Hard ... ?" Kei murmured, teasing Reji's nipple through his shirt.
Reji's voice cracked. " ... Leg ... "
"Oh. Your ... leg. And what might your ... leg ... need?"
Reji cleared his throat, but it seemed his voice was still a little hoarse. "A
rub ... might need a rub ... later. ~ Ann Somerville

She talks as she sails, the old wooden boat -- of oyster days, and summer bays, and watermen grown old. ~ M. Kei

A man of wisdom faces it all and makes his choices that actually can change a lot of things. ~ Kateryna Kei

No, you're wrong. You're not a demon. We are devilmen. We may possess the strength of demons... but we have a human heart. ~ Go Nagai

Unless you have suffered and wept, you really don't understand what compassion is, nor can you give comfort to someone who is suffering. If you haven't cried, you can't dry another's eyes. Unless you've walked in darkness, you can't help wanderers find the way. Unless you've looked into the eyes of menacing death and felt its hot breath, you can't help another rise from the dead and taste anew the joy of being alive. ~ Takashi Nagai