Yukio Mishima

confidential criticism."

I see it as a twilight genre between the night of confession and the daylight of criticism.

comes the pillar of plain wood, then the white ants that feed on it. But for me, the white ants were there from the start, and the pillar of plain wood emerged tardily, already half eaten away.

I lacked, in short, the muscles suitable for a dramatic death.

The formulation of any new way of thought begins with the trial rephrasing in many different ways of a single, as yet ambiguous theme. As the fisherman tries all kinds of rods, and the fencer all kinds of bamboo swords until he finds one whose length and weight suit him, so, in the formulation of a way of thinking, an as yet imprecise idea is given experimental expression in a variety of forms; only when the right measurements and weight are discovered does it become part of oneself.

Here I was at twenty-three, an age when nothing is impossible.

“That pavement’s the border of the world. As long as they can’t see us from down there, they can’t see us from anywhere. It’s funny, really. We’re safe inside this big old lie.”

“That pavement’s the border of the world. As long as they can’t see us from down there, they can’t see us from anywhere. It’s funny, really. We’re safe inside this big old lie.”

“That pavement’s the border of the world. As long as they can’t see us from down there, they can’t see us from anywhere. It’s funny, really. We’re safe inside this big old lie.”

There’s no need to be hopelessly romantic. Modern stars need to speak in a way that clearly frames the woman as a sex object

There’s no need to be hopelessly romantic. Modern stars need to speak in a way that clearly frames the woman as a sex object