315 Quotes by Yukio Mishima

Japanese people today think of money, just money: Where is our national spirit today? The Jieitai must be the soul of Japan. … The nation has no spiritual foundation. That is why you don’t agree with me. You will just be American mercenaries. There you are in your tiny world. You do nothing for Japan. … I salute the Emperor. Long live the emperor!

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

A work of art is by no means the property of its creator.

However, as words become particularized, and as men begin - in however small a way - to use them in personal, arbitrary ways, so their transformation into art begins.

Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning 'love' in this world. It is the effort to join reality with the apparition.

That is because one must proceed from clarity, and the smallest element of miscalculation produces fantasy, and fantasy produces beauty.

Because the fact of not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride, I was never confronted by any impulse to express things and to make others understand something that I knew.

Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination.

This time, Fusako was able to express herself with fluency and candor. The bold letters she had been writing week after week had granted her an unexpected new freedom.