Suddenly the full long wail of a ship's horn surged through the open window and flooded the dim room—a cry of boundless, dark, demanding grief; pitch-black and glabrous as a whale's back and burdened with all the passions of the tides, the memory of voyages beyond counting, the joys, the humiliations: the sea was screaming.

He was in a room of the Gesshuuji, which he had thought it would be impossible to visit. The approach of death had made the visit easy, had unloosed the weight that held him in the depths of being. It was even a comfort to think, from the light repose the struggle up the hill had brought him, that Kiyoaki, struggling against illness up that same road, had been given wings to soar with by the denial that awaited him.

When silence is prolonged over a certain period of time, it takes on new meaning.

A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.

True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.

I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.

Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit-until Christianity invented it.