The most appropriate type of daily life for me was a day-by-day world destruction; peace was the most difficult and abnormal state to live in.
Yukio MishimaHe had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die youngโand if possible free of all pain? A graceful deathโas a richly patterned kimono, thrown carelessly across a polished table, slides unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor beneath. A death marked by elegance.
Yukio MishimaIt seems to me that before the photograph can exist as art it must, by its very nature choose whether it is to be a record or a testimony.
Yukio MishimaWe are not wounded so deeply when betrayed by the things we hope for as when betrayed by things we try our best to despise. In such betrayal comes the dagger in the back.
Yukio MishimaBetter to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination.
Yukio MishimaI am one who has always been interested only in the edges of the body and the spirit, the outlying regions of the body and the outlying regions of the spirit. The depths hold no interest for me; I leave them to others, for they are shallow, commonplace. What is there, then, at the outer most edge? Nothing, perhaps, save a few ribbons, dangling down into the void.
Yukio Mishima