When I think of Tokyo Story, yeah, it is like a novella. That doesn't mean it's not great. Some of my favorite Tolstoy works are his novellas.

I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity.

Each book I've done somehow finds its own unique form, a specific way it has to be written, and once I find it, I stick with it.

you can survive only if nothing is necessary to you

As long as there's one person to believe it, there's no story that can't be true.

I don't think about the stories so much, as the characters themselves. They live on, and they are almost as real as I am.

It's extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can't get a job on a ship unless you have seaman's paper's, and you can't get seaman's papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.