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Sei Shōnagon Quotes

966–1025 Japan

Sei Shōnagon (966-1017/1025) was a Japanese author and a court lady who served the Empress Consort Teishi around the year 1000. She is known as the author of The Pillow Book (makura no sōshi).

Japan
Essayists
Poets

Also known as: Sei Shonagon

Random Sei Shōnagon quote

3 quotes

A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything. (p. 44)

The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon (1002)

It is a piece of writing replete with those typical Japanese wistful and melancholic evocations of ephemerality. It was written a thousand years ago almost exactly to the year the film was made, and it was written by a woman.

One is telling a story about old times when someone breaks in with a little detail that he happens to know, implying that one's own version is inaccurate — disgusting behavior! (p. 46)

The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon (1002)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Sei Shōnagon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.