Yet how strange a thing is the beauty of music! The brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period of time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such short-lived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself. Nothing is so similar to life as music.
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 MishimaIf we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death No death may be called futile.
Yukio MishimaFor an artist to do creative work, he needs at once physical health and some physiomental ill health. He needs both serenity and gloom.
Yukio MishimaA father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn't even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality.
Yukio MishimaWe had stretched out our arms to each other and supported something in our joined hands, but this thing we were holding was like a sort of gas that exists when you believe in its existence and disappears when you doubt. The task of supporting it seems simple at first glance, but actually requires an ultimate refinement of calculation and a consummate skill.
Yukio Mishima