Understanding comes hard to persons of high rank who are accustomed to phony lifestyles that involve no daily work.

- Kenzaburo Oe

The writer's job is the job of a clown …the clown who also talks about sorrow.

- Kenzaburo Oe

I think, we can only write very personal matters through our experience. When I named my first novel about my son "A Personal Matter," I believe I kn…

- Kenzaburo Oe

To be upright and to have an imagination: that is enough to be a very good young man.

- Kenzaburo Oe

After I got married, the first child born to us was mentally handicapped.

- Kenzaburo Oe

It takes a person of great care and insight to watch for any abnormality in the green grass even while it grows abundantly and healthily.

- Kenzaburo Oe

There's no better reading experience than going to the place where a text was written.

- Kenzaburo Oe

I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of th…

- Kenzaburo Oe

The dead can survive as part of the lives of those that still live.

- Kenzaburo Oe