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.

The process in which a writer is compelled to counterfeit his true feelings is exactly the opposite of that which the man of society is compelled to counterfeit his. The artist disguises in order to reveal; the man of society disguises in order to conceal.

Surely, I thought, we do not deserve even a little happiness. Or perhaps we had acquired the bad habit of regarding even a little happiness as a big favor, which we would have to repay.

Life struck us as being a strangely volatile thing. It was exactly as though life were a salt lake from which most of the water had suddenly evaporated, leaving such a heavy concentration of salt that our bodies floated buoyantly upon its surface.

Kensuke and his wife had, like all bored people, a sense of kindness that was close to disease.

Besides, like a man who knows he is dying, he felt a need to be equally tender to all.

Beings in existence thus are annihilated from moment to moment, and this gives rise to time. The process whereby time is engendered by this moment-to-moment annihilation may be likened to a row of dots and a line.

Prudery is a form of selfishness, a means of self-protection made necessary by the strength of one’s own desires.

Those words of my friend were like fertilizer poured over the poisonous weed of an idea deeply planted in me.

If the cause of decay was illness, then the fundamental cause of that, the flesh, was illness too. The essence of the flesh was decay. It had its spot in time to give evidence of destruction and decay.