No matter how accomplished one might be in any branch of learning or art, one would have to be condemned to hell, if on where not endowed with th five cardinal virtues of Confucius-benevolence, justice, courtesy, wisdom and fidelity

I don't have the strength to keep writing this. To go on living with this feeling is painful beyond description. Isn't there someone kind enough to strangle me in my sleep?

I have no conscience at all -- least of all an artistic conscience. All I have is nerves.

He felt so lost, he said later, that the familiar studio felt like a haunted valley deep in the mountains, with the smell of rotting leaves, the spray of a waterfall, the sour fumes of fruit stashed away by a monkey; even the dim glow of the master's oil lamp on its tripod looked to him like misty moonlight in the hills.

17. Butterfly A butterfly fluttered its wings in a wind thick with the smell of seaweed. His dry lips felt the touch of the butterfly for the briefest instant, yet the wisp of wing dust still shone on his lips years later.

..he understood far more deeply than anyone else the loneliness that lurked beneath his jaunty mask.

Yes -- or rather, it's not so much that I want to die as that I'm tired of living.