Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Yoko Ogawa

Quote by Yoko Ogawa

“Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort.”

Quote by Yoko Ogawa

Book:The Housekeeper and the Professor
Create image

Work

The Housekeeper and the Professor

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Yoko Ogawa

Japanese contemporary author, born on March 30, 1962, in Tokyo. Known for her unique narrative style and profound emotional descriptions, her works have won numerous domestic and international literary awards. more

You May Also Like

“As a society, we assume that humans naturally run from emotions like suffering, helplessness, and hopelessness, but the truth is these emotions are highly addictive and far easier to indulge in (in a perversely satisfying way) than positive emotional subsets. Better yet, when you convince others of your helplessness, some people begin to regard you as a victim—someone to be adored and protected.”

SocietyAtheismUniqueBiologyDiverseAgnosticismPragmatismFertility DeclineEnviromental SustainabilityEvoking
Book:The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion: A playbook for sculpting cultures that overcome demographic collapse & facilitate long-term human flourishing
Create image

“Everything that rises will fall. Empires, societies, governments. None of them lasts forever. Why? Because even though they are the products of change, they become resistant to change. The longer a society survives, the more it clings to its power, and the more it resists progress. The more it resists progress- resists change- the more its ciizens demand it. In response, the society tighten its grip, desperate to maintain control. It's afraid of losing its hold.”

ProgressSocietyGovernmentent
Book:The Unbound
Create image

“The "pathology of normalcy" rarely deteriorates to graver forms of mental illness because society produces the antidote against such deterioration. When pathological processes become socially patterned, they lose their individual character. On the contrary, the sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology and arranged the means to give satisfactions which fit the pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation, in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic.”

IndividualSocietyInsanitySanityIndividualismOriginalityAlienationPathology
Book:The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness
Create image

“No other drug can compete with cannabis for its ability to satisfy the innate yearnings for Archaic boundary dissolution and yet leave intact the structures of ordinary society. If every alcoholic were a pothead, if every crack user were a pothead, if every smoker smoked only cannabis, the social consequences of the ‘drug problem’ would be transformed. Yet, as a society we are not ready to discuss the possibility of self-managed addictions and the possibility of intelligently choosing the plants we ally ourselves to. In time, and perhaps out of desperation, this will come.”

SocietyAlcoholLiberationDrugsCannabis
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image