Ruth Ozeki quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Ruth Ozeki on Wise Famous Quotes.

If time is annihilated, mountains and oceans are annihilated.

I think that all writing is in search of lost time. I'm starting to realise that very clearly.

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

I started to think about how words and stories are time beings, too,

Sometimes you don't need words to say what's in your heart.

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

If his medium had been words instead of war, he would have been a poet.

But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It's already then.

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.

Are you a male or a female or somewhere in between?

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

It also felt like home, and she wasn't sure she liked it.

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

You never know who it's going to be, or what they'll bring, but whatever it is, it's always exactly what is needed.

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

With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.

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

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

When up looks up, up is down. When down looks down, down is up. Not-one, not-two. Not same. Not different. Now do you see? It

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

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

There's nothing like realizing that you don't have much time left to stimulate your appreciation for the moments of your life.

Writing a book is a way of thinking to me, the only way of thinking that I have found successful.

Live. For Now. For the time being.

The eternal now," he said. "She wanted to catch it, remember? To pin it down. That was the point." "Of writing?" "Or suicide.

Writing is solitary. You spend so much time alone and in your own mind, telling stories.

Ruth was a novelist, and novelists, Oliver asserted, should have cats and books.

And I could imagine myself searching for lost time under the tree ...

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.

No matter how much bullying they inflict on my body, as long as I have this hope, I can endure any pain.

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

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

True freedom comes from being unknown.

The cat still seemed to be somewhat there with him, but only as an absence, a cat-shaped hole.

I don't hate anybody.

No writer, even the most proficient, could re-enact in words the flow of a life lived.

Every seed has a story.

It costs so much to make films. With a novel, you can write the whole thing on a ream of paper from Staples for $4.

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

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

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

I'm sorry. I was just talking to the moon.

I don't believe I exist, and soon I won't. I am a time being about to expire.

There's nothing sadder than cyberspace . . . but I've already said this.

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.

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

Premonitions are coincidences waiting to happen.

Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can't ever lose.

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.

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

Life is full of stories. Or maybe life is only stories.

For the time being, the entire earth and the boundless sky.

How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal father?

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

When a breeze blew, petals rained down on my upturned face, and I stopped and gasped, stunned by the beauty and sadness.

You can feel life completely by taking it away

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

The ancient Greeks believed that when you read aloud, it was actually the dead, borrowing your tongue, in order to speak again.

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.

I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.

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

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

I think that if we don't learn to inhabit other people's perspectives, then we're never going to understand why people do what they do.

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

Information is a lot like water; it's hard to hold on to, and hard to keep from leaking away.

Have you ever bullied a wave?

As I bathe myself
I pray with all beings
that we can purify body and mind
and clean ourselves inside and out.

As we moved from Tokyo the world became greener.

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

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

Any independent bookstore that has managed to survive is the best place to do a reading.

Life is fleeting. Don't waste a single moment of your precious life. Wake up now! And now! And now!

Like a small boat adrift in the fog, she caught glimpses during patches when the mist cleared of a world far away, in which everything was changing.

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

What if I travel so far away in my dreams that I can't get back in time to wake up?

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

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

I'm a novelist," Ruth said. "I can't help it. My narrative preferences are all I've got.

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

I believe that in the deepest places in their hearts, people are violent and take pleasure in hurting each other.

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

Assumptions and expectations will kill any relationship, so let's you and me not go there, okay?

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

For the time being
Words scatter
Are they fallen leaves?

I don't give a shit about pretty," I informed her. "I'm a superhero. Superheroes don't need pretty.

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

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.

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