The voices / 47 fragments

Ruth Ozeki

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▷ Play this voice Search within this voice ↗Place in time ↗knowledge nature patience truth time justice death learning

Archive entries

01Undated

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 / quote

02Undated

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

Ruth Ozeki / quote

03Undated

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 / quote

04Undated

By changing our history and our memory, they try to erase all our shame.

Ruth Ozeki / quote

05Undated

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

Ruth Ozeki / quote

06Undated

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 / quote

07Undated

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.

Ruth Ozeki / quote

08Undated

What is it that frightens us about a "novel of causes", and conversely, does fiction have to exist in some suspended, apolitical landscape in order to be literary? Can it not politically and temporally specific and still be in good literary taste? We are leery of literature that smacks of the polemic, instructional, or prescriptive, and I guess rightly so--it's a drag to be lectured to--but what does that imply about our attitudes towards intellectual inquiry? While I enjoy reading kitchen-table novels in which characters are distilled to their emotional essence and their lives stripped of politics and commerce, it simply is not reflective of my experience. I see our lives as being a part of an enormous web of interconnected spheres, where the workings of the larger social, political, and corporate machinery impact something as private and intimate as the descent of an egg through a woman's fallopian tube. This is the resonance I want to conjure in my books.I want to write novels that engage the emotions and the intellect, and that means going head to head with the chaos of evils and issues that threaten to overpower us all. And if they threaten to overpower the characters, then I have to make the characters stronger.

Ruth Ozeki / quote

09Undated

True freedom comes from being unknown.

Ruth Ozeki / quote

10Undated

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.

Ruth Ozeki / quote

11Undated

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 / quote

12Undated

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 / quote

13Undated

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

Ruth Ozeki / quote

14Undated

For the time beingWords scatterAre they fallen leaves?

Ruth Ozeki / quote

15Undated

As I bathe myselfI pray with all beingsthat we can purify body and mindand clean ourselves inside and out.

Ruth Ozeki / quote

16Undated

To study the self is to forget the self. Maybe if you sat enough zazen, your sense of being a solid, singular self would dissolve and you could forget about it. What a relief. You could just hang out happily as part of an open-ended quantum array.

Ruth Ozeki / quote

17Undated

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

Ruth Ozeki / quote

18Undated

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

Ruth Ozeki / quote

19Undated

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 / quote

20Undated

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.

Ruth Ozeki / quote

21Undated

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 / quote

22Undated

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 / quote

23Undated

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

Ruth Ozeki / quote

24Undated

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 / quote