Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Taeko Kōno

Quote by Taeko Kōno

“Spirits and ghosts are probably powerless creatures, you know. I know they’re supposed to be able to influence humans — to be able to read their minds, and so on. But they don’t have physical power over people, or objects; I don’t think they can even see them. And what happens when from the other side they try to reach people whose minds are insensitive, and who don’t react? Or who are too sensitive, so they overreact? I’m sure lines get crossed all the time: it must be easy for a ghost to get frustrated and lose interest. Besides, after a while, seeing into people’s minds must get quite boring and annoying. And aren’t ghosts supposed to be bundles of irritation and resentment? No, I dread dying all the more when I think of such an eternally painful existence. If anything, I envy people who can believe in nothingness after death.”

Quote by Taeko Kōno

Work

Toddler-Hunting & Other Stories

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Taeko Kōno

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Taeko Kōno. more

You May Also Like

“When there is no way of knowing exactly how long our skeins will run--and when we imagine ourselves to have much more time than we do--our every impulse is to fight, to die with chemo in our veins or a tube in our throats or fresh sutures in our flesh. The fact that we may be shortening or worsening the time we have left hardly seems to register. We imagine that we can wait until the doctors tell us that there is nothing more they can do. But rarely is there nothing more that doctors can do. They can give toxic drugs of unknown efficacy, operate to try to remove part of the tumor, put in a feeding tube if a person can't eat: there's always something. We want these choices. But that doesn't mean we are eager to make the choices ourselves. Instead, most often, we make no choice at all. We fall back on the default, and the default is: Do Something. Fix Something. Is there any way out of this?”

“Dying is really inconceivable in the way it comes about, even though it is easily predictable by the very nature of our existence. However, it is as though man does not believe in death. Even though he witnesses it, he conceives and recognizes it only at a safe distance to be able to ignore its threat of finality at his own peril and the peril of those he loves. It appears as though the “world of dying” around us is not sufficiently close to become emotionally acceptable (that’s why perhaps we live as though we will exist forever), and even the disappearance of our loved ones does not serve as a lesson of any sort.”