Kokoro Noir

“Who was by nature incapable of not loving” (Soseki 12). The narrator is describing Sensei when he first meets him.

“Loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves” (Soseki 30). Sensei states this to the narrator, talking about himself, as we realize later on that he states this because of his past.

“The grave stood like some monstrous thing, forever separating us” (Soseki 32). The narrator and Sensei have a wall separating them because of the presence of the grave, and the narrator understands early on that he can never truly understand Sensei.

“To you alone, then, among the millions of Japanese, I wish to tell you my past” (Soseki 128). Sensei decides to confide in the narrator and him alone.

“It was no more real to me than a distant scene observed from the wrong end of a telescope” (Soseki 135). Sensei did not think that these adult, life situations were going to occur so soon.

“Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things” (Soseki 142). Sensei wants to be able to change the narrator’s life, and does not want him to go through the same things that he did.

“How I wish,” he said, “that you could understand my suffering” (Soseki 193). It is impossible to have a mutual understanding, which Sensei realizes after his experience with Kade, and his own experience with the narrator.

“But even at such a moment I could not forget my own welfare” (Soseki 229). Sensei feels an enormous amount of guilt, but he also almost feels that he isn’t even worthy of commiting suicide.

“So long as my wife is alive, I want you to keep everything I have told you a secret-- even after I myself am dead” (Soseki 248). Sensei wanted to protect his wife, and did not want her to suffer through what he went through. He also did not want her to know the reason he and Kade commited suicide.