Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood. Yukio Mishima More Quotes by Yukio Mishima More Quotes From Yukio Mishima Living is merely the chaos of existence. Yukio Mishima chaos existence The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future. Yukio Mishima strong spring memories Other people must be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed. Yukio Mishima order people world We tend to suffer from the illusion that we are capable of dying for a belief or theory. What Hagakure is insisting is that even in merciless death, a futile death that knows neither flower nor fruit has dignity as the death of a human being. If 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 Mishima flower dying suffering Actually the action called a kiss represented nothing more for me than some place where my spirit could seek shelter. Yukio Mishima shelter kissing spirit Amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky with their magnificent silhouette of pointed cedars, amid the speckled patches of the moon, amid the temple buildings that emerged sparkling white out of the surrounding darkness - amid all this, I was intoxicated by the pellucid beauty of Uiko's treachery. Yukio Mishima stars moon night Within those confining walls, teachers - a bunch of men all armed with the same information - gave the same lectures every year from the same notebooks and every year at the same point in the textbooks made the same jokes. Yukio Mishima wall notebook teacher This is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies and no deceptions. One can detect here, elevated to an incomparably higher level, the same pathetic emotional appeal that lies concealed in every fake spiritualist photograph, every pornographic photograph; one comes to suspect that the strange, disturbing emotional appeal of the photographic art consists solely in that same repeated refrain: this is a true ghost... this is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies, no deceptions. Yukio Mishima emotional lying art I still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line. Yukio Mishima one-line lines writing I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire of possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself. Yukio Mishima wings animal baby At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it. Yukio Mishima discipline preparation journey His emotion evident in the glitter of his eyes. Yukio Mishima glitter emotion eye As usual, it occurred to me that words were the only thing that could possibly save me from this situation. This was a characteristic misunderstanding on my part. When action was needed, I was absorbed in words; for words proceeded with such difficulty from my mouth that I was intent on them and forgot all about action. It seemed to me that actions, which are dazzling, varied things, must always be accompanied by equally dazzling and equally varied words. Yukio Mishima usual mouths action It is a common failing of childhood to think that if one makes a hero out of a demon the demon will be satisfied. Yukio Mishima childhood hero thinking 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. Yukio Mishima white yesterday men ..and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions; that death took root at the moment of birth and man’s only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it; that propagation was a fiction; consequently, society was a fiction too; that fathers and teachers, by virtue of being fathers and teachers, were guilty of a grievous sin. Yukio Mishima simple teacher father 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. Yukio Mishima expression writing years The only people in this world I really trust are my fans - even if they do forget you so fast. Yukio Mishima fans people world Time is what matters. As time goes by, you and I will be carried inexorably into the mainstream of our period, even though we’re unaware of what it is. And later, when they say that young men in the early Taisho era thought, dressed, talked, in such and such a way, they’ll be talking about you and me. We’ll all be lumped together…. In a few decades, people will see you and the people you despise as one and the same, a single entity. Yukio Mishima what-matters talking men 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. Yukio Mishima records photograph art
