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“True freedom comes from being unknown.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“When I run out of the things I love, I move on to the things I don't hate too much, and sometimes I even discover that I can love the things I think I hate.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Jiko: "Surfer, wave, same thing."

"That's just stupid, " I said. " A surfer's a person. A wave is a wave. How can they be the same?"

Jiko looked out across the ocean to where the water met the sky. "A wave is born from deep conditions of the ocean. A person is born from deep conditions of the world. A person pokes up from the world and rolls along like a wave, until it is time to sink down again. Up, down. Person, wave.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Fed on a media diet of really bad news, we live in a perpetual state of repressed panic. We are paralyzed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb. Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement. Our collective norm.”
― Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats

“He's got this thing about Canada. He says it's like America only with health care and no guns, and you can live up to your potential there and not have to worry about what society thinks or about getting sick or getting shot.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Every person is trapped in their own particular bubble of delusion, and it's every person's task in life to break free. Books can help. We can make the past into the present, take you back in time and help you remember. We can show you things, shift your realities and widen your world, but the work of waking up is up to you.”
― Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness

“No matter how much bullying they inflict on my body, as long as I have this hope, I can endure any pain.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“At first I was like, No way am I saying that, but when you hang out with people who are always being supergrateful and appreciating things and saying thank you, in the end it kind of rubs off, and one day after I'd flushed, I turned to the toilet and said, "Thanks, toilet," and it felt pretty natural. I mean, it's the kind of thing that's okay to do if you're in a temple on the side of a mountain, but you'd better not try it in your junior high school washroom, because if your classmates catch you bowing and thanking the toilet they'll try to drown you in it. I explained this to Jiko, and she agreed it wasn't such a good idea, but that it was okay just to feel grateful sometimes, even if you don't say anything. Feeling is the important part. You don't have to make a big deal about it.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“I have a pretty good memory, but memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Old Jiko is supercareful with her time. She does everything really really slowly, even when she's just sitting on the veranda, looking out at the dragonflies spinning lazily around the garden pond. She says that she does everything really really slowly in order to spread time out so that she'll have more of it and live longer, and then she laughs so that you know she is telling you a joke.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“I helped Jiko to her feet and we walked back to the bus stop together, holding hands again. I was still thinking about what she said about waves, and it made me sad because I knew that her little wave was not going to last and soon she would join the sea again, and even though I know you can't hold on to water , still I gripped her fingers a little more tightly to keep her from leaking away.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“... there's the fact of her being a hundred and four years old. I keep saying that's her age, but actually I'm just guessing. We don't really know for sure how old she is, and she claims she doesn't remember, either. When you ask her, she says,

"Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne."


.... (footnote) Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne -- "I have been alive for a very long time, haven't I?" Totally impossible to translate, but the nuance is something like: "I have been caused to live by the deep conditions of the universe to which I am humbly and deeply grateful. P. Arai calls it the "gratitude tense," and says the beauty of this grammatical construction is that "there is no finger pointed to a source." She also says, "It is impossible to feel angry when using this tense.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Where should I start? I texted my old Jiko this question, and she wrote back this: ¬FÔڵؤÇʼ¤Þ¤ë¤Ù¤­. You should start where you are.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“There are many answers, none of them right, but some of them most definitely wrong.”
― Ruth L. Ozeki, My Year of Meats

“A book must start somewhere. One brave letter must volunteer to go first, laying itself on the line in an act of faith, from which a word takes heart and follows, drawing a sentence into its wake. From there, a paragraph amasses, and soon a page, and the book is on its way, finding a voice, calling itself into being.”
― Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness

“Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can't ever lose.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Truth is like the moon in the sky. Words are like a finger. A finger can point to the moon's location, but it is not the moon. To see the moon, you must look past the finger. To look for the truth in books, the Sixth Patriarch was saying, is like mistaking the finger for the moon. The moon and the finger are not the same thing.

"Not same," old Jiko would have said. "Not different, either.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Books will always have the last word, even if nobody is around to read them.”
― Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness

“Stories never start at the beginning, Benny. They differ from life in that regard. Life is lived from birth to death, from the beginning into an unknowable future. But stories are told in hindsight. Stories are life lived backward.”
― Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness

“Inside? Outside? What is the difference and how can you tell? When a sound enters your body through your ears and merges with your mind, what happens to it? Is it still a sound then, or has it become something else? When you eat a wing or an egg or a drumstick, at what point is it no longer a chicken? When you read these words on a page, what happens to them, when they become you?”
― Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness

“If you've ever tried to keep a diary, then you'll know that the problem of trying to write about the past really starts in the present: No matter how fast you write, you're always stuck in the then and you can never catch up to what's happening now, which means that now is pretty much doomed to extinction.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Jiko looked out accross the ocean to where the water met the sky. "A wave is born from the deep conditions of the ocean," she said. "A person is born form the deep conditions of the world. A person pokes up from the world and roll along like a wave. Until it's time to sink down again. Up, down. Person, wave.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“I believe that in the deepest places in their hearts, people are violent and take pleasure in hurting each other.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Hi!
My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.

A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be. As for me, right now I am sitting in a French maid cafe in Akiba Electricity Town, listening to a sad Chanson that is playing sometime in your past, which is also my present, writing this and wondering about you, somewhere in my future. And if you're reading this, then maybe by now you're wondering about me, too.

You wonder about me.

I Wonder about you.

Who are you and what are you doing?”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“INSTRUCTIONS FOR ZAZEN First of all, you have to sit down, which you¡¯re probably already doing. The traditional way is to sit on a zafu cushion on the floor with your legs crossed, but you can sit on a chair if you want to. The important thing is just to have good posture and not to slouch or lean on anything. Now you can put your hands in your lap and kind of stack them up, so that the back of your left hand is on the palm of your right hand, and your thumb tips come around and meet on top, making a little round circle. The place where your thumbs touch should line up with your bellybutton. Jiko says this way of holding your hands is called hokkai jo-in,113 and it symbolizes the whole cosmic universe, which you are holding on your lap like a great big beautiful egg.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Few boys have been as fortunate as I, raised into manhood with only the gentlest of words and blandishments in my ears and the kindest of caresses upon my person, by a mother who sheltered us from everything that is harsh and ugly in this world. I was spoiled, utterly unprepared for cruelty, and perhaps this sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm not! You mustn't think I blame you. I'm afraid I must sound like the most ungrateful son in the world, when in fact the opposite is true. I am more grateful now than ever for the way you raised us, teaching us the value of kindness, of education, of independent thinking and liberal ideals, in the face of the fascism that is sweeping our country. The cruelest punishments now fail to bring even a tear to my eye, but the thought of the hardship you've suffered on behalf of your ideals makes me weep like a baby.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Over and over, I ran at the sea, beating it until I was so tired I could barely stand. And then the next time I fell down, I just lay there and let the waves wash over me, and I wondered what would happen if I stopped trying to get back up. Just let my body go. Would I be washed out to sea? The sharks would eat my limbs and organs. Little fish would feed on my fingertips. My beautiful white bones would fall to the bottom of the ocean, where anemones would grow upon them like flowers. Pearls would rest in my eye sockets.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Do not think that time simply flies away. Do not understand ¡°flying¡± as the only function of time. If time simply flew away, a separation would exist between you and time. So if you understand time as only passing, then you do not understand the time being.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“I¡¯m pretty healthy and I don¡¯t mind the idea of dying, but I also don¡¯t want to get mowed down by some freaky high school kid in a trench coat who¡¯s high on Zoloft and has traded in his Xbox for a semiautomatic.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being