“ Again and again, the cicada’s untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth. Yukio Mishima
“ It seemed that hell could appear day or night, at any time, at any place, simply in response to one's thoughts or wishes. It seemed that we could summon it at our pleasure and that instantly it would… Yukio Mishima
“ Might it have been nothing but life itself? Life; this limitless complex sea, filled with assorted flotsam, brimming with capricious, violent, and yet eternally transparent blues and greens. Yukio Mishima
“ Again, there were maidens who cherished the firm belief that he had come from the sea. Because within his breast could be heard the roaring of the sea. Because in the pupils of his eyes there lingered… Yukio Mishima
“ Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confro… Yukio Mishima
“ This time, Fusako was able to express herself with fluency and candor. The bold letters she had been writing week after week had granted her an unexpected new freedom. Yukio Mishima
“ Kazu, now that she thought of it, realized that for all her headstrong temperament, she had never loved a man younger than herself. A young man has such a surplus of spiritual and physical gifts that… Yukio Mishima
“ A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn't even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality. Yukio Mishima
“ An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enou… Yukio Mishima
“ So far as feelings were concerned, there was no discrepancy between the very finest feeling in this world and the very worst; that their effect was the same; that no visible difference existed between… Yukio Mishima
“ Do I, then, belong to the heavens?Why, if not so, should the heavensFix me thus with their ceaseless blue stare,Luring me on, and my mind, higherEver higher, up into the sky,Drawing me ceaselessly upT… Yukio Mishima
“ To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not be loved, but at the final stage I had substituted desire for love and felt a sort of relief. But i… Yukio Mishima
“ When I arrived at the house in the suburbs that night I seriously contemplated suicide for the first time in my life. But as I thought about it, the idea became exceedingly tiresome, and I finally dec… Yukio Mishima
“ …Her desire was close to that of the person who drowns himself; he does not necessarily covet death so much as what comes after the drowning—something different from what he had before, at least a dif… Yukio Mishima
“ The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids. Yukio Mishima
“ I felt as though I owned the whole world. And little wonder, because at no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny , as when we are busy with prepar… Yukio Mishima
