InspiringQuotes

Ruth Ozeki Quotes:

Ruth Ozeki quotes

Ocupation: Novelist

Life: b. March 12, 1956

Birthday: March 12

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Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren't tears. She wasn't crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “A Tale for the Time Being: A Novel”, Penguin

Topics: Memories, Eye, Past

quote sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the ruth ozeki Quotes

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.

Topics: Dream, Crazy, Imagination

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.

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “A Tale for the Time Being”, p.273, Canongate Books

Topics: Opportunity, Life And Death, Passing Away

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

Topics: Life, Inspiring, Fleeting, Wake Up Now, Precious Life

For the time being Words scatter Are they fallen leaves?

Topics: Fallen, Fallen Leaves

That's what it feels like when I write, like I have this beautiful world in my head, but when I try to remember it in order to write it down, I change it, and I can't ever get it back.

Topics: Beautiful, Writing, Order

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.

Topics: Book, Writing, Long, Didactic, Backfire

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

Topics: Language, Conjuring, Form

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

Topics: Book, Writing, Successful

Fiction is an elemental force, which has the power to shape reality in its own image - or images, I should say - because reality, like light, exists not only as a single point or particle, but also as an array of possibilities.

source: - "Ruth Ozeki beats Thomas Pynchon to top Kitschie award" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. February 13, 2014.

Topics: Reality, Light, Fiction

Inspiration comes from everything from the entire world, and its hard to pinpoint one thing. I can trace one inspiration to the writing of 13th-century Zen master Dogen Zenji, who writes beautifully about time.

Topics: Inspiration, Writing, World, Zen Master

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

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “A Tale for the Time Being”, p.88, Canongate Books

Topics: Over It

When Im 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.

Topics: Writing, Irritation, Tea, Green Tea

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

Topics: Mind, Juxtaposition, Odd

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.

Topics: Way, Reader, Emerging

Casting your voice out into the future is very beautiful to me.

Topics: Beautiful, Voice, Casting

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

Topics: Home

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.

Topics: Flow, Wake Up, Universe

I have a pretty good memory, but memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.

Topics: Beautiful, Memories, Cherry Blossom

A person is born form the deep conditions of the world. A person pokes up from the world and roll along like a wave. Until it's time to sink down again. Up, down. Person, wave.

Topics: World, Wave, Form

The important thing was that we were being polite and not saying all the things that were making us unhappy, which was the only way we knew how to love each other.

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “A Tale for the Time Being”, p.45, Canongate Books

Topics: Important, Unhappy, Way, Being Polite

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.

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “My Year of Meats”, p.261, Canongate Books

Topics: Needed

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

Topics: Bullying, Pain, Inspiration

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

Topics: Good Night, Stories, Life Is

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

Topics: Determination, Book, Focus

She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness.

Topics: New York, Drama, Struggle, Power Struggle, Built Environment

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

Topics: Water, Information

..I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you. A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.

Topics: Life, Mean, Giving

And if you decide not to read anymore, hey, no problem, because you're not the one I was waiting for anyway. But if you decide to read on, then guess what? You're my kind of time being and together we'll make magic!

Topics: Waiting, Magic, Together

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.

Topics: Believe, Long, Matter, Meaningless Life

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

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “A Tale for the Time Being: A Novel”, Penguin

Topics: Dream, What If, Wake Up, Back In Time

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

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “My Year of Meats”, p.236, Canongate Books

Topics: Life, Answers

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.

source: - Source: www.motherjones.com

Topics: Thinking, People, Perspective

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

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “All Over Creation”, p.229, Canongate Books

Topics: Generosity, Infinite, Abandon, Wanton, Wondrous

Do all kids have to worry about their parents’ mental health? The way society is set up, parents are supposed to be the grown-up ones and look after the kids, but a lot of times it’s the other way around.

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “A Tale for the Time Being: A Novel”, Penguin

Topics: Kids, Worry, Parent

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

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “All Over Creation”, p.346, Canongate Books

Topics: Life Is, Failing, Consolation

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 ?

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “A Tale for the Time Being”, p.87, Canongate Books

Topics: Mean, Past, Doe

Print is predictable and impersonal, conveying information in a mechanical transaction with the reader’s eye. Handwriting, by contrast, resists the eye, reveals its meaning slowly, and is as intimate as skin.

source: - Ruth Ozeki (2013). “A Tale for the Time Being”, p.16, Canongate Books

Topics: Eye, Skins, Handwriting

...I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you. A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.

source: - "A Tale For The Time Being". Book by Ruth Ozeki, www.npr.org. March 7, 2013.

Topics: Life, Mean, Giving, Do You Know

By the time we, consumers, are aware of processes like genetic engineering, they're already being done. It's sort of like the war in Iraq: By the time we know about it, it's almost a fait accompli. And that's certainly true with science.

Topics: War, Engineering, Iraq, Genetic Engineering

She sat back on her heels and nodded. The thought experiment she proposed was certainly odd, but her point was simple. Everything in the universe was 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. That’s what it means to be a time being, old Jiko told me, and then she snapped her crooked fingers again. And just like that, you die.

Topics: Being Old

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