For an artist to do creative work, he needs at once physical health and some physiomental ill health. He needs both serenity and gloom.
Yukio MishimaWhat I wanted was to die among strangers, untroubled, beneath a cloudless sky. And yet my desire differed from the sentiments of that ancient Greek who wanted to die under the brilliant sun. What I wanted was some natural, spontaneous suicide. I wanted a death like that of a fox, not yet well versed in cunning, that walks carelessly along a mountain path and is shot by a hunter because of its own stupidity.
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 MishimaHis conviction of having no purpose in life other than to act as a distillation of poison was part of the ego of an eighteen-year-old. He had resolved that his beautiful white hands would never be soiled or calloused. He wanted to be like a pennant, dependent on each gusting wind. The only thing that seemed valid to him was to live for the emotions--gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose.
Yukio Mishima