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

Beyond doubt, there was a certain splendor in pain, which bore a deep affinity to the splendor that lies hidden within strength.

The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority

It 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.

Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result

All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.

…the samurai ethic is a political science of the heart, designed to control such discouragement and fatigue in order to avoid showing them to others. It was thought more important to look healthy than to be healthy, and more important to seem bold and daring than to be so. This view of morality, since it is physiologically based on the special vanity peculiar to men, is perhaps the supreme male view of morality.