“In fact, there is no such thing as character, something fixed and final. The real thing is something that novelists don’t know how to write about. Or, if they tried, the end result would never be a novel. Real people… — Soseki Natsume Copy Share
“Novelists congratulate themselves on their creation of this kind of “character” or that kind of “character,” and readers pretend to talk knowingly about “character,” but all it amounts to is that the writers are enjoying themselves writing lies and the… — Sōseki Natsume Copy Share Image
“In fact, there is no such thing as character, something fixed and final. The real thing is something that novelists don’t know how to write about. Or, if they tried, the end result would never be a novel. Real people are strangely difficult to make sense out of. Even a god would have his hands full trying. But maybe I’m… — Soseki Natsume Copy Share
“I would guess that he thought and thought for at least ten years before he came up with a stupendous idea, that glory of… — Soseki Natsume Copy Share Image
“Under the sun the couple presented smiles to the world. Under the moon, they were lost in thought: and so they had quietly passed… — Sōseki Natsume Copy Share Image
“Miss Blanche, having given through her tears a complete account of this event, assured me that, to maintain our own parental love and enjoy… — Sōseki Natsume Copy Share Image
“But since heaven has not seen fit to dower the human animal with an ability to understand cat language, I regret to say that… — Sōseki Natsume Copy Share Image
“A stomach can resite itself in a pulmonary location; Coxinga can be blood-kin to the Seiwa Minamotos; and that Mr. Tami, much maligned, may well be unreliable. But as soon as those naked objects emerge from their bathhouse into the normal world, they garb themselves in obedience to the requirements of civilization and, once robed, they resume the nature and… — Sōseki Natsume Copy Share
“So that wee bit of a thing is what you call a haiku-play? Quite awful! Ueda Bin is constantly pointing out in his essays… — Sōseki Natsume Copy Share Image
“How deep, how recondite this seeming petty heart, In whose recesses right and wrong lie dimmed by distance.” — Sōseki Natsume Copy Share Image
“The autumn leaves, arranged in two or three scarlet terraces among the pine-trees, have fallen like ancient dreams.” — Sōseki Natsume Copy Share Image
“When twilight fell, first upon knickers and then upon surcoats, there came the dawn of Japanese skirted-trousers. These were designed by monsters peeved by the surcoat boom, and the descendants of their inventors include both the warriors of medieval times and all contemporary government officials. The plain, if regrettable, fact is that all the originally naked monsters strove vaingloriously to… — Sōseki Natsume Copy Share
“With a palate as unrefined as mine I can’t taste any difference between this French food and what we had at that sleazy bar I got into trouble for inviting you to. To someone like me, they taste equally good. I know you disdain me for that. But the truth is, I take pride in that very fact, and I… — Sōseki Natsume Copy Share
