As Long As You Know I Am

True Beauty Is Something That Attacks, Overpowers, Robs, And Finally Destroys.

Was I Ignorant, Then, When I Was Seventeen? I Think Not. I Knew Everything. A Quarter-century's Experience Of Life Since Then Has Added Nothing To What I Knew. The One Difference Is That At Seventeen I Had No 'realism'.

It Is A Common Failing Of Childhood To Think That If One Makes A Hero Out Of A Demon The Demon Will Be Satisfied.

Let Us Remember That The Central Reality Must Be Sought In The Writer's Work: It Is What The Writer Chose To Write, Or Was Compelled To Write, That Finally Matters. And Certainly Mishima's Carefully Premeditated Death Is Part Of His Work.

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.