Revenge Quotes

“For a torture to be effective, the pain has to be spread out; it has to come at regular intervals, with no end in sight. The water falls , drop after drop after drop, like the second hand of a watch, carving up time. The shock of each individual drop is insignificant, but the sensation is impossible to ignore. At first, one might manage to think about other things, but after five hours, after ten hours, it becomes unendurable. The repeated stimulation excites the nerves to a point where they literally explode, and every sensation in the body is absorbed into that one spot on the forehead---indeed, you come to feel that you are nothing but a forehead, into which a fine needle is being forced millimeter by millimeter. You can’t sleep or even speak, hypnotized by a suffering that is greater than any mere pain. In general, the victim goes mad before a day has passed.”
― Yoko Ogawa, Revenge

“The desires of the human heart know no reason or rules.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“When I’m curled up in his arms like this, I can never tell how my body looks to him. I worry that I seem completely ridiculous, but I have the ability to squeeze into any little space he leaves for me. I fold my legs until they take up almost no room at all, and curl in my shoulders until they’re practically dislocated. Like a mummy in a tomb. And when I get like this, I don’t care if I never get out; or maybe that’s exactly what I hope will happen.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“She began to sing, but I could not make out the words. It must have been a love song, to judge from the slightly pained expression on her face, and the way she tightly gripped the microphone. I noticed a flash of white skin on her neck. As she reached the climax of the song, her eyes half closed and her shoulders thrown back, a shudder passed through her body. She moved her arm across her chest to cradle her heart, as though consoling it, afraid it might burst. I wondered what would happen if I held her tight in my arms, in a lovers’ embrace, melting into one another, bone on bone… her heart would be crushed. The membrane would split, the veins tear free, the heart itself explode into bits of flesh, and then my desire would contain hers - it was all so painful and yet so utterly beautiful to imagine.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“The reason she was crying didn’t matter to me. Perhaps there was no reason at all. Her tears had that sort of purity.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales

“I was afraid that if she went on much longer, her fingers would scrape away my skin, rip my flesh, crush my bones. The pillow was damp with saliva, and I wanted to scream.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“I had no intention of running after him. It was as though he had already gone somewhere far away, and I could run and run but I would never catch him.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“The door that would not open no matter how hard you pushed, no matter how long you pounded on it. The screams no one heard. Darkness, hunger, pain. Slow suffocation. One day it occurred to me that I needed to experience the same suffering he had.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“Jealousy seems to make me suffer in the most unexpected ways.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“You may be thinking that a bag is just a thing in which to put other things. And you’re right, of course. But that’s what makes them so extraordinary. A bag has no intentions or desires of its own, it embraces every object that we ask it to hold. You trust the bag, and it, in return, trusts you. To me, a bag is patience; a bag is profound discretion.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“Are you eating?" I asked. "You have to keep up your strength."

"All of a sudden you're grown and worrying about me, instead of the other way around. Seems like yesterday you were just a little boy.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“Some tomatoes rolled in front of my car and must have been crushed under the tires, but I could barely feel them. They offered no resistance, as though they had wanted to be smashed all along, smeared across the road. The other cars swerved to avoid the tomatoes, but I decided to try to hit as many as possible. If I got more than ten, I would go on, I would follow the road where it led. In the rearview mirror, I could see a strip of crimson stretching out behind the car. Did hitting tomatoes feel the same as hitting a person? I began to count: one, two, three, four, five …”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“I worried that if she were forced to say more, she might shrink farther away and disappear altogether.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“Bet she looks as good inside as out – warm, red, inviting, all those little wrinkles tempting you deeper and deeper…”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“It shocked me to realize that he suddenly seemed old -- so frail that the slightest push would have sent him tumbling. The body I had felt when I'd gone searching for my hidden presents had been sturdier; and though I had always thought of him as tall, e was now much shorter than me.

I realized I had no idea how old he was -- I suppose I'd thought that something as mundane as age could never apply to him.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“-Excuse me,- I said, but my voice seemed to disappear into the dark.
It was my body. In this gloomy, cramped box, I had eaten poison plants and died, hidden away from prying eyes.
Crouching down at the door, I wept. For my dead self.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“Na zalanym słońcem placu wszystko było na swoim miejscu - nic dodać, nic ująć. Nawet uważny obserwator uznałby, że oto jest świat, który nic jeszcze nie utracił.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“the strawberries dried out, wrinkling up like the heads of deformed babies.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales

“I had a friend once who was dumped by her boyfriend because he didn’t like a coat she had bought. It was a very nice cashmere coat, but for some reason it disgusted him to see her wearing it. At least that’s what he told her. She cut it up, doused it in lighter fluid, and burned it, but her boyfriend never came back.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales