If any suffering was fruitless it was the agony of a hangover; what he suffered now could not expiate suffering of any other kind.

It is the second job of literature to create myth. But its first job is to destroy it.

The people of Hiroshima went to work at once to restore human society in the aftermath of the great atomic flood. They were concerned to salvage their own lives, but in the process they also salvaged the souls of the people who have brought the atomic bomb.

In Japan itself there have all along been attempts by some to obliterate the article about renunciation of war from the Constitution and for this purpose they have taken every opportunity to make use of pressures from abroad.

After I got married, the first child born to us was mentally handicapped.

To be upright and to have an imagination: that is enough to be a very good young man.

By reading Huckleberry Finn I felt I was able to justify my act of going into the mountain forest at night and sleeping among the trees with a sense of security which I could never find indoors.