“We Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ou...”

“When I lived on the Bluff in Yokohama I spend a good deal of my leisure in the company of foreign residents, at their banquets and balls. At close range I was not particularly struck by their white...”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

“Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce that it is not genteel comedy even that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundes...”

“Let us love. Let our lives be a perpetual song of love for God, first of all, and for all human beings who suffer, love, and mourn. Let deep joy live in us. Let us be like the lark, enemy of the ni...”

“Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together.”

“Good literature is one key to peace. When we stop reading each other, when we stop paying attention to each other's words and stories, we too easily oppose one another.”

“There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book tak...”