I write to please myself—of course, that is a given. But beyond this reach for pleasure, I know that I write for my countrymen, that they may be lifted from apathy and ignorance. I write because of a compulsion to make something out of the nothing that is my own life.

I do not want to be bored listening to music that is muffled and known only to the poet himself.

The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the new hotels made at the expense of the people, the hospitals where the poor die when they get sick because they don't have the money either for medicines or services. It is only in this light that the real definition of obscenity should be made.

Perhaps, this is what love has always been, whether it is for a woman of for a cause -- the readiness to give and not ask for anything in return, the unquestioning willingness to lose everything, even if that loss is as something as precious as life itself.

Of course, we are all egoists. Egoism is so much a part of our humanity.

The Japanese bureaucracy is unique. It is also very powerful, although it is now the object of so much criticism. Many of Japans brightest made it a pillar of strength and continuity.

Just because you have so much to give does not mean that they'll all be accepted. There's more to giving than just giving.