We tend to suffer from the illusion that we are capable of dying for a belief or theory. What Hagakure is insisting is that even in merciless death, a futile death that knows neither flower nor fruit has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile.

It is a common failing of childhood to think that if one makes a hero out of a demon the demon will be satisfied.

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

In the pale light of daybreak the gravestones looked like so many white sails of boats anchored in a busy harbor. They were sails that would never again be filled with wind, sails that, too long unused and heavily drooping, had been turned into stone just as they were. The boats' anchors had been thrust so deeply into the dark earth that they could never again be raised.

For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.

...of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.

I still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line.