For an artist to do creative work, he needs at once physical health and some physiomental ill health. He needs both serenity and gloom.

The period of childhood is a stage on which time and space become entangled.

Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura's version of political theory.

Was I ignorant, then, when I was seventeen? I think not. I knew everything. A quarter-century's experience of life since then has added nothing to what I knew. The one difference is that at seventeen I had no 'realism'.

When silence is prolonged over a certain period of time, it takes on new meaning.

A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.

Actually the action called a kiss represented nothing more for me than some place where my spirit could seek shelter.