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'.

As long as you know I am waiting, take your time flowers of the spring.

There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.

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

I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.

It is a rather risky matter to discuss a happiness that has no need of words.

He had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die young—and if possible free of all pain? A graceful death—as 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.