Heaven Quotes

“But I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I guess I was crying because we had nowhere else to go, no choice but to go on living in this world. Crying because we had no other world to choose, and crying at everything before us, everything around us.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“Because we’re always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“Listen, if there is a hell, we're in it. And if there's a heaven, we're already there. This is it.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“her voice was amazing, like a 6B pencil”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“What is dying anyway? I let this impossible question fill the darkness of my bedroom. I thought about how somebody was always dying somewhere, at any given moment. This isn’t a fable or a joke or an abstract idea. People are always dying. It’s a perfect truth. No matter how we live our lives, we all die sooner or later. In which case, living is really just waiting to die. And if that’s true, why bother living at all? Why was I even alive? I made myself crazy, tossing and turning, hyperventilat- ing. Then it hit me: dying is just like sleeping. You only know you’re sleeping when you wake up the next day, but if morn- ing never comes, you sleep forever. That must be what death is like. When someone dies, they don’t even know they’re dead. Because they never see it happen, nobody ever really dies. This hit me like a sucker punch.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“Everything that I could see was beautiful. I cried and cried, standing there, surrounded by that beauty, even though I wasn’t standing anywhere. I could hear the sound of my own tears. Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“Even if something happens to us, even if we die and never have to deal with them again, the same thing will happen to someone, somewhere. The same thing. The weak always go through this, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Because the strong never go away. That’s why you want to pretend to be like them, isn’t it? You want to join them.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“At first, suicide was just a word, a vague idea separate from reality. It pointed at a way that other people chose to die, people I didn't even know. But once the word became my own, it took on the strangest shape. I could feel it growing deep inside of me. Suicide wasn't something that happened to strangers. I could make it happen, if I wanted to.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“Without school, I could get by without seeing anyone or being seen by anyone. It was like being a piece of furniture in a room that nobody uses. I can't express how safe it felt never being seen.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“Then it hit me: dying is just like sleeping. You only know you’re sleeping when you wake up the next day, but if morning never comes, you sleep forever. That must be what death is like. When someone dies, they don’t even know they’re dead. Because they never see it happen, nobody ever really dies. This hit me like a sucker punch.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“In the cold December air, all the leaves, thousands upon thousands of them, flashed against the sky, drenched in gold. Every leaf rang with its own light, and all the light poured into me without end.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“For people to actually live by some golden rule, we’d have to be living in a world with no contradictions. But we don’t live in a world like that. No one does. People do what works for them, whatever makes them feel good. But because nobody likes getting stepped on, people start spouting crap about being good to others, being considerate, whatever. Tell me I’m wrong. Everyone does things they don’t want people doing back. Predators eat prey, and school serves no real purpose other than separating the kids who have what it takes from the ones who don’t. That’s the whole point. Everywhere you look, the strong walk all over the weak. Even those fools who think they’ve found the answers by coming up with perfect little sayings about how the world ought to be can’t escape it. Because the real world is everywhere.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“But I wasn't crying because I was sad. I guess I was crying because we had nowhere else to go, no choice but to go on living in this world. Crying because we had no other world to choose, and crying at everything before us, everything around us.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“There are all kinds of things in the world I don't understand, but I really wanted to understand you.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“I knew that it was cruel to be so optimistic, but, in my solitude, I couldn't resist the urge and spent entire days basking in idiotic fantasies, sometimes verging on prayer.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“Because we're always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“I remembered how she wrote once about when you send someone a letter, how it's out of your hands. It's not yours anymore, even though you wrote it.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“When I was writing, I realized something. Your voice reminds me of a 6B. I'm not sure if this is going to make sense, but it's like they're soft and rigid at the same time. Almost unbreakable.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“No matter how we live our lives, we all die sooner or later. In which case, living is really just waiting to die. And if that's true, why bother living at all? Why was I even alive?”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“No, I shouted. I don’t want that kind of strength. I don’t want to be dragged into this, and I don’t want to drag anyone else down, either.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“The paintings here were mystifying. In the reds and greens of the canvases, maidens danced with animals, a goat or something carried a violin in its mouth, and a man and a woman embraced under a gigantic blazing bouquet. This swarm of unrelated images was like a glimpse into a dream. But not a good one. The joy I saw there was ferocious, and the sadness suffocatingly cold. Blues thrown onto the canvas warred with yellows approaching like tornadoes. People gathered round aghast to watch a circus spin to life.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“If you don’t like it, stopping it is up to you and no one else. It’s that simple. You should know that this rule about treating others the way you want to be treated is bullshit. Total bullshit. It’s just this thing that people with no power and no talent tell themselves. Wake the hell up.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“It's funny, but when I'm doing nothing, I get this feeling like I'm fighting something. Stick... fighting. It never goes away, even when I'm in bed, even when I'm walking around.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“If anything has meaning, everything does. And if nothing has meaning, nothing does. That's what I was saying. It's all the same. You, me, we're all free to interpret the world however we want. We see the world differently. It's that simple.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“You think about how other people feel. You're so kind. It makes sense. Because we're always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“It’s the only thing we can do. And not just for our sake, you know? It’s for the other kids, too, even if they don’t realize it. But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is we understand it, you and me. We get it. And, like, in that way, living with this weakness, accepting it completely, that’s the greatest strength in the whole world. It’s not just my dad or them or us. We do it for everyone who’s weak everywhere, in the name of actual strength. Everything we take, all of the abuse, we do it to rise above. We do it for the people who know how important it is.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“They don't know how they make other people feel, and they've never stopped to think about other people's pain.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“When you were a kid, people probably told you that you would go to hell if you were bad, right? Well, guess what. There’s no hell. It’s all made up. They made it up. Nothing had any meaning, so they had to make some. The weak can't handle reality. They can't deal with the pain or sadness, let alone the obvious fact that nothing has any meaning.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“We'll understand some things while we're alive and some after we die. But it doesn't really matter when it happens. What matters is that all the pain and all the sadness have meaning.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven