For a long time I had not approached the forbidden fruit called happiness, but it was now tempting me with a melancholy persistence. I felt as though Sonoko were an abyss above which I stood poised.

We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.

For a long time I had not approached the forbidden fruit called happiness, but it was now tempting me with a melancholy persistence. I felt as though Sonoko were an abyss above which I stood poised.

The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail.

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

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

Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?