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There could be joy in destruction, too, couldn’t there? Isn’t Jesus Christ’s Second Coming supposed to occur only after a lot of unmitigated destruction? But again, human history is fraught with tragedies in which man spared no effort to destroy with millenarian joy, only to learn that no messiah appeared afterwards.

— Kenzaburō Ōe Shizuka-na seikatsu (A Quiet Life) (1990)

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More quotes by Kenzaburō Ōe

The destination of the soul: this is what I, led on by Nils Holgersson, came to seek in the literature of Western Europe.

I cannot talk about myself otherwise than by saying "Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself".

Japan, The Ambiguous, and Myself (1994)

I don’t think young people need to see the face of the deceased.

Shizuka-na seikatsu (A Quiet Life) (1990)

The ideal teacher student relationship exists when the student is better than the teacher.

Shizuka-na seikatsu (A Quiet Life) (1990)

To repeat the error by exhibiting, through the construction of nuclear reactors, the same disrespect for human life is the worst possible betrayal of the memory of Hiroshima’s victims.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Kenzaburō Ōe (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.