Ruth Ozeki Quotes

If time is annihilated, mountains and oceans are annihilated. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Everything seemed to grow blacker as I sat there, except for the fireflies whose tiny pulsing lights drew arcs through the dark summer air. On off . . . on off . . . on off . . . on off. The longer I stared, the dizzier I got, until I felt as if the world was tipping and pitching me forward down the mountainside into the long throat of the night. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Am I crazy?" she asked. "I feel like I am sometimes."
"Maybe," he said, rubbing her forehead. "But don't worry about it. You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It's your superpower. Tapping into the dream. It's a good thing not a bad thing. ~ Ruth Ozeki

You can't hold on to water or keep it from leaking away. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Language is magical - it's a form of conjuring. If you do it convincingly, readers will follow you. ~ Ruth Ozeki

When I'm writing a novel, I'm usually just trying to write about things that are interesting to me. ~ Ruth Ozeki

When I stand on the edge of a tall place I feel like I'm on the edge of time, peering into forever. The question 'What if ... ?' rises up in my mind, and it's exciting because I know that in the next instant, in less time than it takes to snap my fingers, I could fly into eternity. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Are you a male or a female or somewhere in between? ~ Ruth Ozeki

time isn't something you can spread out like butter or jam, and death isn't going to hang around and wait for you to finish whatever you happen to be doing before it zaps you ~ Ruth Ozeki

Old Jiko says that nowadays we young Japanese people are heiwaboke.112 I don't know how to translate it, but basically it means that we're spaced out and careless because we don't understand about war. She says we think Japan is a peaceful nation, because we were born after the war ended and peace is all we can remember, and we like it that way, but actually our whole lives are shaped by the war and the past and we should understand that. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Next you just relax and hold really still and concentrate on your breathing. You don't have to make a big deal about it. It's not like you're thinking about breathing, but you're not not thinking about it either. It's kind of like when you're sitting on the beach and watching the waves lapping up on the sand or some little kids you don't know playing in the distance. You're just noticing everything that's going on, both inside you and outside you, including your breathing and the kids and the waves and the sand. And that's basically it. ~ Ruth Ozeki

But memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die. ~ Ruth Ozeki

When I start writing these novels, I go into them with a spirit of inquiry rather than to substantiate prejudices I had in the beginning. If you don't do that, you can't write good characters. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Nonthinking. This is the essential art of zazen. ~ Ruth Ozeki

For a writer, you definitely do not want to be in the mainstream. You want to be on the edge because that's where the vantage point is. That's where you can see. ~ Ruth Ozeki

As she stared at the restless pixels on the screen, her impatience grew. This agitation was familiar, a paradoxical feeling that built up inside her when she was spending too much time online, as though some force was at once goading her and holding her back. How to describe it? A temporal stuttering, an urgent lassitude, a feeling of simultaneous rushing and lagging behind. It was a horrible, stilted, panicky sensation, hard to put into words. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Do not think that time simply flies away. Do not understand "flying" as the only function of time. If time simply flew away, a separation would exist between you and time. So if you understand time as only passing, then you do not understand the time being. To grasp this truly, every being that exists in the entire world is linked together as moments in time, and at the same time they exist as individual moments of time. Because all moments are the time being, they are your time being. ~ Ruth Ozeki

At one point in my life, I learned how to think. I used to know how to feel. In war, these are lessons best forgotten. ~ Ruth Ozeki

When you beat a drum, you create NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you're breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and the thunder. ~ Ruth Ozeki

It's okay to have impossible goals, because if you follow your unreachable star no matter how hopeless or far, your heart will be peaceful when you're dead, even though you might be scorned and covered with scars like I am while you're still alive. ~ Ruth Ozeki

INSTRUCTIONS FOR ZAZEN First of all, you have to sit down, which you're probably already doing. The traditional way is to sit on a zafu cushion on the floor with your legs crossed, but you can sit on a chair if you want to. The important thing is just to have good posture and not to slouch or lean on anything. Now you can put your hands in your lap and kind of stack them up, so that the back of your left hand is on the palm of your right hand, and your thumb tips come around and meet on top, making a little round circle. The place where your thumbs touch should line up with your bellybutton. Jiko says this way of holding your hands is called hokkai jo-in,113 and it symbolizes the whole cosmic universe, which you are holding on your lap like a great big beautiful egg. ~ Ruth Ozeki

But by spring, she had again yielded to the tug and tide of his mind, allowing its currents to carry her back across the continent and wash them up on the remote shores of his evergreen island.. ~ Ruth Ozeki

As we moved from Tokyo the world became greener. ~ Ruth Ozeki

She'd been betwitched. She'd pricked her finger and had fallen into a deep, comalike sleep. ~ Ruth Ozeki

I believe it doesn't matter what it is, as long as you can find something concrete to keep you busy while you are living your meaningless life. ~ Ruth Ozeki

When I'm writing a novel, which is what I like to write, I get up early, sit zazen, make a pot of green tea. I wear wrist cuffs to keep my wrists warm and minimize irritation from extended contact with the surface of my desk. I sit down and write. ~ Ruth Ozeki

You know how good-byes feel. How the air gets excited when all its ions and electrical charges are disrupted, first by the intent to leave and later by the leaving itself. Then, when the bodies move away through space, they create empty pockets where feelings get caught and eddy around in the vacuum, creating little vortices of relief or sadness or confusion. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Death is certain. Life is always changing, like a puff of wind in the air, or a wave in the sea, or even a thought in the mind. ~ Ruth Ozeki

She smiled. Life is full of stories. Or maybe life is only stories. Good night, my dear Nao. ~ Ruth Ozeki

In your diary, you quoted old Jiko saying something about not-knowing, how not-knowing is the most intimate way, or did I just dream that?
Anyway, I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think maybe it's true, even though I don't really like uncertainty. I'd much rather 'know', but then again, not-knowing keeps all the possibilities open. It keeps all the worlds alive. ~ Ruth Ozeki

My mind is like a gyre, and odd juxtapositions happen. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Canada has always been a great place for literature. It's strong and growing stronger, and there will always be reading, and there will always be great writers. ~ Ruth Ozeki

The relationship between reader and writer is reciprocal in a way. We co-create each other. We are constantly emerging out of the relationship we have with others. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Life is evanescent, but left to itself it rarely fails to offer some consolation. ~ Ruth Ozeki

I did documentary film for a long time, and I spent a lot of time behind the camera, fervently wishing that the reality I was filming would conform to my narrative propriety. But you can't control it. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Could Pesto be his own observer? Interesting question. He used to like to raise his leg and study his asshole. It didn't seem like this observation caused him to split into multiple cats with multiple assholes. ~ Ruth Ozeki

And what does it mean to waste time anyway? If you waste time is it lost forever? ~ Ruth Ozeki

In trying to stop your tears, I was already obeying the officer's command to the letter, not out of patriotic allegiance, but out of cowardice, in order not to feel the pain of my own heart, breaking. ~ Ruth Ozeki

The only time they ever throw anything away is when it's really and truly broken, and then they make a big deal about it. They save up all their bent pins and broken sewing needles and once a year they do a whole memorial service for them, chanting and then sticking them into a block of tofu so they will have a nice soft place to rest. Jiko says that everything has a spirit, even if it is old and useless, and we must console and honor the things that have served us well. ~ Ruth Ozeki

When I write fiction, I have the illusion of being able to control these fictional worlds and these characters, and to make them say what I want them to say. Of course, the problem is that it is an illusion, and by the end of it you realize that you're not in control of it at all; the characters have taken over, and they're driving the vehicle. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Don't waste a single moment of your precious life! Wake up now! And now! And now! 6. ~ Ruth Ozeki

One of her vows was to save all beings, which basically means that she agreed not to become enlightened until all the other beings in this world get enlightened first. ~ Ruth Ozeki

It takes a long time to write a book. I'm not going to spend that much time trying to deliver a message. The reason I do it is because I want to understand something myself. It's not a delivery device, it's an inquiry device. Didactic fiction to my mind never works. It backfires. ~ Ruth Ozeki

She told me it's called the Maka Hanya Haramita Shingyo,69 which means something like the Great Most Excellent Wisdom Heart Sutra. The only part I remember goes like this: Shiki fu i ku, ku fu i shiki.70 It's pretty abstract. Old Jiko tried to explain it to me, and I don't know if I understood it correctly or not, but I think it means that nothing in the world is solid or real, because nothing is permanent, and all things - including trees and animals and pebbles and mountains and rivers and even me and you - are just kind of flowing through for the time being. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Adjunct teachers are the professorial equivalent of the migrant Mexican farm laborers hired during harvest. If you can get a good contract at the same farm every year, where the farmer pays you on time and doesn't cheat or abuse you, then it's in your best interest to show up consistently from year to year. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Stocking up" is what our robust Americans called it, laughing nervously, because profligate abundance automatically evokes its opposite, the unspoken specter of dearth. ~ Ruth Ozeki

On the far side stretched the open Pacific and beyond, but the crow could not fly high enough to see its way home. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Do you have a cat and is she sitting on your lap? Does her forehead smell like cedar trees and fresh sweet air? ~ Ruth Ozeki

Patience was part of his nature, and he accepted his lot as a short-lived mammal, scurrying in and out amid the roots of the giants. ~ Ruth Ozeki

We were soldiers, but even before we were showed how to kill our enemies, they taught us how to kill ourselves. ~ Ruth Ozeki

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all the myriad things. ~ Ruth Ozeki

At the time I was feeling hopeful, which now seems kind of sad and brave. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Blessed Stars, please make this world into a place where we will never again be forced to kill an enemy whom we cannot hate. Were such a thing to come about, I would not complain even if my body were torn to pieces, again and again. ~ Ruth Ozeki

The past (...) It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exist but doesn't now, then where did it go? ~ Ruth Ozeki

The wondrous thing about nature, her gift to us, is her wanton promiscuity. She reproduces herself with abandon, with teeming infinite generosity. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Otaku (おた) is also a formal way of saying "you". た means "house", and with the honorific お, it literally means "your honorable house", implying that you are less of a person and more of a place, fixed in space and contained under a roof. Makes sense that the stereotype of the modern otaku is a shut-in, an obsessed loner and social isolate who rarely leaves his house. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Time itself is being, he wrote, and all being is time . . . In essence, everything in the entire universe is intimately linked with each other as moments in time, continuous and separate. ~ Ruth Ozeki

In Japan if you say "the war," people know you mean World War II, because that was the last one that Japan fought in. In America it's different. America is constantly fighting wars all over the place, so you have to be more specific. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Drawing my thoughts out of my mind and holding me down to earth at the same time. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Few boys have been as fortunate as I, raised into manhood with only the gentlest of words and blandishments in my ears and the kindest of caresses upon my person, by a mother who sheltered us from everything that is harsh and ugly in this world. I was spoiled, utterly unprepared for cruelty, and perhaps this sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm not! You mustn't think I blame you. I'm afraid I must sound like the most ungrateful son in the world, when in fact the opposite is true. I am more grateful now than ever for the way you raised us, teaching us the value of kindness, of education, of independent thinking and liberal ideals, in the face of the fascism that is sweeping our country. The cruelest punishments now fail to bring even a tear to my eye, but the thought of the hardship you've suffered on behalf of your ideals makes me weep like a baby. ~ Ruth Ozeki

People have always heard voices. Sometimes they're called shamans, sometimes they're called mad, and sometimes they're called fiction writers. I always feel lucky that I live in a culture where fiction writing is legal and not seen as pathology. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Everything in the universe is constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Main Street is dead, which is no news to the families whose families ran family businesses on Main Street. When I returned...I found that all the local businesses from my childhood had been extirpated by Wal-Mart. If there is one single symbol for the demise of regional American culture, it is this superstore prototype, a huge capitalist boot that stomped the moms and pops, like soft, damp worms, to death. Don't get me wrong. I love Wal-Mart. There is nothing I like more than to consign a mindless afternoon to those aisles, suspending thought, judgment. It's like television. But to a documentarian of American culture, Wal-Mart is a nightmare. When it comes to towns, Hope, Alabama, becomes the same as Hope, Wyoming, or, for that matter, Hope, Alaska, and in the end, all that remains of our pioneering aspirations are the confused and self-conscious simulacra of relic culture: Ye Olde Curiosities 'n' Copie Shoppe, Deadeye Dick's Saloon and Karaoke Bar - ingenious hybrids and strange global grafts that are the local businessperson's only chance of survival in economies of scale. ~ Ruth Ozeki

In my heart, I am American, and I believe I have a free will and can take charge of my own destiny. ~ Ruth Ozeki

There's something about Vonnegut's deadpan irony that I really like. And I like Borges' puzzle structure. ~ Ruth Ozeki

There are many answers, none of them right, but some of them most definitely wrong. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Maybe this is what it's like when you die. Your inbox stays empty. At first, you just think nobody's answering, so you check your SENT box to make sure your outgoing mail is okay, and then you check your ISP to make sure your account is still active, and eventually you have to conclude that you're dead. ~ Ruth Ozeki

I don't mind the risk, because the risk makes it more interesting ~ Ruth Ozeki

I would like to think of my 'ignorance' less as a personal failing and more as a massive cultural trend, an example of doubling, of psychic numbing, that characterizes the end of the millennium. If we can't act on knowledge, then we can't survive without ignorance. ~ Ruth Ozeki

I felt so stupid and young, and at the same time something was cracking open inside me, or maybe it was the world was cracking open to show me something really important underneath. I knew I was only seeing a tiny bit of it, but it was bigger than anything I'd ever seen or felt before. ~ Ruth Ozeki

An unfinished book. left unattended, turns feral, and she would need all her focus, will and ruthless determination to tame it again. ~ Ruth Ozeki

True freedom comes from being unknown. ~ Ruth Ozeki

There's so much to write. Where should I start?
I texted my old Jiko this question, and she wrote me back this:
'You should start where you are ~ Ruth Ozeki

Coming at us like this--in waves, massed and unbreachable--knowledge becomes symbolic of our disempowerment--becomes bad knowledge--so we deny it, riding its crest until it subsides from consciousness... "Ignorance." In this root sense, ignorance is an act of will, a choice that one makes over and over again, especially when information overwhelms and knowledge has become synonymous with impotence... If we can't act on knowledge, then we can't survive without ignorance... Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement. ~ Ruth Ozeki

When I wash my feet May all sentient beings Attain the power of supernatural feet With no hindrance to their practice. Of ~ Ruth Ozeki

Yes," I told her. "I'm angry, so what?"
... I went on, giving her an executive summary of my crappy life.
...
"So of course I feel angry," I said angrily. "What do you expect? It was a stupid thing to ask."
"Yes," she agreed. "It was a stupid thing to ask. I see that you're angry. I don't need to ask such a stupid thing to understand that."
"So why did you ask?"
Slowly she turned herself around, pivoting on her knees, until finally she was facing me, "I asked for you," she said.
"For me?"
So you could hear the answer. ~ Ruth Ozeki

And my coffee is Blue Mountain and I drink it black, which is unusual for a teenage girl, but it's definitely the way good coffee should be drunk if you have any respect for the bitter beans. ~ Ruth Ozeki

I am really interested in the way we relate to time. In particular, the way readers and writers talk to each other. Casting your voice out into the future is very beautiful to me. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Even though I was making documentaries, my films had fictional elements to them. I think I like blurring those distinctions because so much of what we see on television purports to be the truth, but it's often largely imaginary - or wishful thinking, or any number of less honorable things. ~ Ruth Ozeki

I find myself drawn to literature more now than in the past; not the individual works as much as the idea of literature - the heroic effort and nobility of our human desire to make beauty of our minds - which moves me to tears, and I have to brush them away, quickly, before anyone notices. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Maybe all teenagers feel like they don't fit in. I never felt like a cool kid. I remember being bullied for being Asian. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Whenever I think about my stupid empty life, I come to the conclusion that I'm just wasting my time, and I'm not the only one. Everybody I know is the same, except for old Jiko. Just wasting time, killing time, feeling crappy.
And what does it mean to waste time anyway? If you waste time is it lost forever?
And if time is lost forever, what does that mean? It's not like you get to die any sooner, right? I mean, if you want to die sooner, you have to take matters into your own hands. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Both life and death manifest in every moment of existence. Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate. They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant is utterly critical to the whole world. ~ Ruth Ozeki

As someone who has to teach for a living, I shouldn't be saying this, but the planet can do quite well without books. ~ Ruth Ozeki

There used to be a middle way, too, when her attention was focused but vast, and time felt like a limpid pool, ringed by sunlit ferns. An underground spring fed the pool from deep below, creating a gentle current of words that bubbled up, while on the surface, breezes shimmered and played. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Le mal de vivre, 'the pain of life.' Qu'll faut bien vivre ... 'that we must live with, or endure.' Vaille que vivre, this is difficult but it is something like 'we must live the life we have. We must soldier on. ~ Ruth Ozeki

We place such crazy importance on physical appearance in our image-obsessed culture, on youth and beauty to define our sense of self-worth, that aging, by default, becomes a kind of defect, something secret and corrosive and shameful. ~ Ruth Ozeki

She can hear the crazy thoughts that are going through your mind before you can even find them. ~ Ruth Ozeki

We're by-products of the mid-twentieth century", Oliver said.
"Who isn't? ~ Ruth Ozeki

Where do words come from? They come from the dead. We inherit them. Borrow them. Use them for a time to bring the dead to life. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Over and over, I ran at the sea, beating it until I was so tired I could barely stand. And then the next time I fell down, I just lay there and let the waves wash over me, and I wondered what would happen if I stopped trying to get back up. Just let my body go. Would I be washed out to sea? The sharks would eat my limbs and organs. Little fish would feed on my fingertips. My beautiful white bones would fall to the bottom of the ocean, where anemones would grow upon them like flowers. Pearls would rest in my eye sockets. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Together we'll make magic ...
Who had conjured whom?
She seemed to remember Oliver suggesting this once before, but she hadn't really appreciated the importance of his question. Was she the dream? Was Nao the one writing her into being? Agency is a tricky business, Muriel had said. Ruth had always felt substantial enough, but maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was as absent as her name indicated, a homeless and ghostly composite of words that the girl had assembled. She'd never had any cause to doubt her senses. Her empirical experience of herself, seemed trustworthy enough, but now in the dark, at four in the morning, she wasn't so sure. ~ Ruth Ozeki

So then you ask her when her birthday is, and she says, Hmm, I don't really remember being born ~ Ruth Ozeki

For the time being
Words scatter
Are they fallen leaves? ~ Ruth Ozeki

The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist ? It feels like it exists, but where is it ? And if it did exists, but doesn't now, then where did it go ? ~ Ruth Ozeki

At first I was like, No way am I saying that, but when you hang out with people who are always being supergrateful and appreciating things and saying thank you, in the end it kind of rubs off, and one day after I'd flushed, I turned to the toilet and said, "Thanks, toilet," and it felt pretty natural. I mean, it's the kind of thing that's okay to do if you're in a temple on the side of a mountain, but you'd better not try it in your junior high school washroom, because if your classmates catch you bowing and thanking the toilet they'll try to drown you in it. I explained this to Jiko, and she agreed it wasn't such a good idea, but that it was okay just to feel grateful sometimes, even if you don't say anything. Feeling is the important part. You don't have to make a big deal about it. ~ Ruth Ozeki

For the time being, the entire earth and the boundless sky. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Because, you see, this feeling of alive is not so easy to experience ~ Ruth Ozeki

What is the half-life of information? Does its rate of decay correlate with the medium that conveys it? Pixels need power. Paper is unstable in fire and flood. Letters carved in stone are more durable, although not so easily distributed, but inertia can be a good thing. ~ Ruth Ozeki

He hated the idea of killing people he could not hate. ~ Ruth Ozeki