Isao had never felt that he might want to be a woman. He had never wished for anything else but to be a man, live in a manly way, die a manly death. To be thus a man was to give constant proof of one's manliness-to be more a man today than yesterday, more a man tomorrow than today. To be a man was to forge ever upward toward the peak of manhood, there to die amid the white snows of that peak.

I cried sobbingly until at last those visions reeking with blood came to comfort me. And then I surrendered myself to them, to those deplorably brutal visions, my most intimate friends.

For an artist to do creative work, he needs at once physical health and some physiomental ill health. He needs both serenity and gloom.

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

Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one’s own heart.

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

There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.