Kenzaburo Oe Quotes

Sometimes I think I can expiate all my past and future sins through the aching of my bones.

I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions.

Sin carries in it its own misery.

That's what troubles me: I should like to suffer more for the expiation of my sins.

Why couldn't the merciful God turn down the sunlight so it wasn't blasting like a red furnace against his aching eyes? Because he'd worshipped the god of beer, thats why. He'd broken a commandment and worshipped the false and foamy god of beer. And now he was being punished.

Everything he had ever done that had been better left undone. Every lie he had told — told to himself, or told to others. Every little hurt, and all the great hurts. Each one was pulled out of him, detail by detail, inch by inch. The demon stripped away the cover of forgetfulness, stripped everything down to truth, and it hurt more than anything.

Having gone through what I went through, watching my family be torn to shreds and my children suffer immensely, I can't be the agent of doing that to someone else. I can't be the agent of causing someone to go to prison.

Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment; only there does its satisfaction lie.

Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.

The penalty may be removed, the crime is eternal.

Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering.

I lied for years and years. And the thing about lies and secrets is that they eat you alive from the inside. I would not wish that pain on anyone.

Sorrow is held the eldest child of sin.

All of us have made mistakes in our lives, but only some of us have had to pay for the mistakes. [By going to jail.]

Everything 'Atonement' does, it does incredibly well, including depicting characters of varying ages and temperaments and showing the intensity of early romantic love and connection and the very different intensity of haunting regret.

You don't get dead and there not be consequences.

If you have ever clothed another with woe, as with a garment of pain, you will never be quite as happy as though you had not done that thing.

Since I only got one life to ive, God forgive me for my sins, let me make it and i'll never steal again, or deal again, my only friend is my misery. Wantin revenge for the agony they did to me.

The plan was to drink until the pain is over, But what's worse, the pain or the hangover?

What punishments of God are not gifts?

Labour is the purgatory of the erring.

God hath yoked to guilt her pale tormentor,--misery.

That is the bitterest of all,--to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing.

A fool thinks it like honey so long as the bad deed does not bear fruit, but when it does bear fruit he experiences suffering.