Some people can't go into church any longer to feel this longing, but they still have the longing, so what do they do? Well, one thing you can do is what people do in prison; they turn to poetry.

The best presenters have conversations with their audiences.

I have daughters and I have sons./When one of them lays a hand/On my shoulder, shining fish/Turn suddenly in the deep sea.

Hierarchy, as in the Catholic Church, has to do with power, and vertical attention has to do with longing.

The ancestors are very much invested in the children, because the children are the ones who are going to continue the world that the ancestors made.

By the time a man is 35 he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he received in high school do not work in life.

What you feel in Japanese poetry is always entirely longing.