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"And the night was over, and the day began.
The stone doors of the mausoleum opened (apparently of their own volition, for there was no one to open them) and the people, and the dreams, and the gods, and all manner of other creatures and beings, went in, each one after its fashion.
And already the conversations and indiscretions and intoxications of the night before had begun to vanish, like the mists of night, in the heat of the morning.
The mourners took their seats, one by one, without hesitation or question. No one directed them, but they walked into their own seats and sat down, as quietly and efficiently as if they'd been rehearsing for this moment all their lives.
The people moved as if their every move were foreordained, as if they had no true will of their own.
As if every action were written long ago, in a book..."
-Narrator, in "The Wake" by Neil Gaiman
"Sometimes I wish I could just say what I mean
Sometimes it just isn't right
And sometimes I think that the memory of what never was
Would always be sweeter than anything that could have been...
-from Kazu Kibuishi's "The Orange Grove"
"This is not what I look like. This is not my face...
Do you think Jane Yolen looks like her picture in this book? Or Peter Straub? Or Dianna Wynn Jones? Not so. They are wearing play faces to fool you. But the play faces come off, when the writing begins...
This is why those who encounter writers of fantasy, are rarely satisfied by the wholely inferior persons that they meet...
"I thought you'd be taller, or older, or prettier, or wiser..." they tell us. In words or wordlessly...
"This is not what I look like..." I tell them, "This is not my face...""
-from Neil Gaiman's introduction to "The Faces of Fantasy"
"Ever since I realised I was not the hero of the story. Simply one of the many, many extras. I've been able to accept a life where nothing ever really goes my way....."
"It's not over for the world yet... tomorrow is another day..."
-from "What a Wonderful World!" (素晴らしい世界, Subarashii Sekai) by Asano Inio (浅野 いにお)
"You don't know what the mountain's really like until you've climbed it.
Any mountain looks tall if all you do is look up from below."
-Takamichi Kimoto in Mitsuru Adachi's "Katsu"
"It is sometimes a mistake to climb; it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt. If you do not climb, you will not fall. This is true. But is it that bad to fail, that hard to fall?"
"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly..."
—from Neil Gaiman's "Sandman"
"If I draw all these anecdotes one day, it will probably look like I had a great time here. Taken out of context, even boredom can probably subliminate itself and seem entertaining. It's a bit like memory..."
"It does leave you with an urge to travel... I wouldn't mind seeing the Taj Mahal one of these days... When I think that all I've got to do is buy a ticket... I can go anywhere I like... We hardly ever stop to notice how amazingly free we really are..."
-Guy Delisle
"I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt..."
-Celine in "Before Sunrise"
"It takes the most distant course to come nearest to yourself.
It takes the greatest climb to bring us to nature's finest beauty.
We must knock at every other door to reach our own.
To reach the innermost self in the end..."
-adapted from Tagore's poem in "The Most Distant Course"
“The lion-dogs were originally a lion and a dog, and were very different in appearance, but over the years stonecutters found it easier to carve them to the same proportions. The two figures grew more and more alike until their features blended. One lion-dog has a mouth that is always open, the other has a mouth that is always closed. The open-mouthed dog is named “Ah”, and the other is named “Un”, or more properly, “nn”. “Ah” is the first sound you make when you are born, “nn”, the last sound you make when you die. “Ah” is the breath inhaled that begins life, “nn” the exhale of release, the breath that allows life to escape. Between the two lies all of existence, a universe that turns on a single breath. “あ” is also the first symbol in the Japanese alphabet, “ん” the last. And so, between the two lion-dogs, you also have the A and Z, the Alpha and Omega. In the original Sanskrit, “ah-un” means “the end and the beginning of the universe; infinity unleashed”.
In Japan, people who are in perfect tune with each other, such as a pianist and a violinist playing in duet, are called “ah/un-no-kokyuu”. “Kokyuu” means “breathing”, and phrase has the nuance of perfect, exquisite harmony: “ah/un-no-kokyuu”, two or more breathing as one.
If self-actualization is the ideal to which the Western world aspires, the common breath is the ideal to which Japan – and indeed, much of Asia – aspires. The word “harmony” in Japan has the same cachet that the word “freedom” has in the West.
In Japan, the word for freedom, “jiyuu”, carries with it the nuance of selfish or irresponsible behavior. Group Harmony is a higher value. This does not make the Japanese a nicer people. There are thieves and cheats and nasty characters in Japan as there are anywhere. But the values that Japanese society subscribe to are starkly different from those of the West. If you had to embody the ideals of the West, it would be the Statue of Liberty, or the Goddess of Jiyuu as she is known in Japan, standing defiantly, the torch raised: a singular, powerful, one-of-a-kind presence. This is not the type of thing you would choose if you wished to give form to Japanese ideals. The ideals of Japan are captured in a thousand small stone guardians, in a thousand shrines, big and small, across Japan. A dog and lion so near in spirit that they have blended into one. “Ah/un-no-kokyuu”.”
-from Will Ferguson's "Hokkaido Highway Blues"
"Everything has a beginning and an end. Life is just a cycle of starts and stops. There are ends we don't desire, but they're inevitable, we have to face them. It's what being human is all about..."
-Jet Black in "Cowboy Bebop"
"Life is all about goodbyes..."
