Hiro Ohta

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. - Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

The warmth we seek is not beneath the lamp, but in the space between us.

The best way to manage time is to forget it exists. Even after the candle goes out.

I take one small risk every day. Over a lifetime, it’s the safest way to live. Today, I’m about to order a dish I can’t pronounce. - Capitol Hotel, Tokyo

One should imagine Sisyphus very much alive!

Lights pass. Their trails stay. Maybe ours will too.

The steeper the slope, the more intentional the balance. The more life leans, the more alive we become.

Sometimes fragility outlasts robustness. Sometimes paper boats go places iron ships fear.

A city is where abstractions are poured into concrete.

Go slow. Look up. Let the city find you.

On storm coasts, people built light on purpose. Lose little, rebuild fast. They turned fragility into insurance.

Everything is alone. Stars. Stones. Strangers. Even you. And yet, here we are, alone together.

The world is not built on straight lines. We live where the curves and edges cross.

The universe has heard you: your lights are green, flow forward.

Idę, idę

“Break on through….”

Be water. Be light. Be something where they meet.

Living apart. Together.

Go. Even if the end is invisible.

Spirited Away (2001) was a metaphor for a brothel. Hayao Miyazaki said our society had become one big sex industry. Today, everything is built for instant desire. We are part of what keeps it running. The girl at the heart of the film, trying not to lose her name, is every one of us.

Maybe the world ends today. Maybe not. Either way, coffee first. Thoughts later.

Between two places is where you actually live.

A class of 30 students all reading the same book. An obvious mistake. - John Cage

To reach the other side, first accept the risk that the other side may not exist.

Samurai built small tea rooms. For guests they might kill by morning, they prepared flowers, ink, and silence.

The fog makes the street intimate by making it disappear.

The fox, the sphinx, the gargoyle. Those placed at the threshold are rarely human. They are watching for something. It might be us.

Wonderful thought to begin your day! Enjoy the show.

Existence is a chair placed in infinity. Space has no end. Time has no end. Yet somewhere in it all, there is one seat for you. Small, but yours.

We all see the world through a frame. The real question is whether we chose it.

I love walking in the rain because no one can see me crying. - Charlie Chaplin

A library is never quiet. The moment we leave, the books start talking. About the old days. About the new arrivals. But mostly about us.

There is a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them. - Jo Walton

Exist. Glow. Fade.

The brighter the path, the fainter my fate.

You can feel lost. And still be exactly where you wanted to be.

I’ll never know if the colors I see are the colors you see. Somehow we both find the same sunset beautiful. Maybe that’s enough. - Hotel Okura, Tokyo

A campfire. A stage. A screen. For thousands of years, we’ve sat in the dark, waiting for a story. Maybe it’s the oldest thing we do together.

I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. - Richard P. Feynman

I’ll never know if the colors I see are the colors you see. Somehow we both find the same sunset beautiful. Maybe that’s enough. - Hotel Okura, Tokyo

I walked upstairs to my bedroom. Halfway up, someone was already descending. Neither of us stopped. It was me, wearing a sinister grin.

Seen or unseen, the same person. That is style.

An ancient pagoda is proof of the Lindy Effect. The longer it has lasted, the longer it will survive. Still standing long after everything new has fallen.

Architecture is born from design, fulfilled by rain.

The stairs are not taking you somewhere. They are the somewhere.

Ten thousand years ago, someone, somewhere, chose not to eat a seed. No name. No grave. No anniversary. Only a monument that grows back everywhere, every year.

Our ancestors crossed oceans without knowing if land existed on the other side. They didn’t check the reviews first. We’re here thanks to them. - Capitol Hotel, Tokyo

Good moments in life fade, like a cup of tea. For now, I still remember. That is enough.

In a world enslaved by purpose, purposelessness is the key to life.

Our ancestors crossed oceans without knowing if land existed on the other side. They didn’t check the reviews first. We’re here thanks to them. - Capitol Hotel, Tokyo