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

Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?

History knew the truth. History was the most inhuman product of humanity.It scooped up the whole of human will and, like the goddess Kali in Calcutta, dripped blood from its mouth as it bit and crunched.

Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.

I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire of possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself.

We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.

He was in a room of the Gesshuuji, which he had thought it would be impossible to visit. The approach of death had made the visit easy, had unloosed the weight that held him in the depths of being. It was even a comfort to think, from the light repose the struggle up the hill had brought him, that Kiyoaki, struggling against illness up that same road, had been given wings to soar with by the denial that awaited him.