It Is A Rather Risky Matter To

For An Artist To Do Creative Work, He Needs At Once Physical Health And Some Physiomental Ill Health. He Needs Both Serenity And Gloom.

His Conviction Of Having No Purpose In Life Other Than To Act As A Distillation Of Poison Was Part Of The Ego Of An Eighteen-year-old. He Had Resolved That His Beautiful White Hands Would Never Be Soiled Or Calloused. He Wanted To Be Like A Pennant, Dependent On Each Gusting Wind. The Only Thing That Seemed Valid To Him Was To Live For The Emotions--gratuitous And Unstable, Dying Only To Quicken Again, Dwindling And Flaring Without Direction Or Purpose.

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.

Actually The Action Called A Kiss Represented Nothing More For Me Than Some Place Where My Spirit Could Seek Shelter.

To See Human Beings In Agony, To See Them Covered In Blood And To Hear Their Death Groans, Makes People Humble. It Makes Their Spirits Delicate, Bright, Peaceful. It's Never At Such Times That We Become Cruel Or Bloodthirsty. No, It's On A Beautiful Spring Afternoon Like This That People Suddenly Become Cruel. It's At A Moment Like This, Don't You Think, While One's Vaguely Watching The Sun As It Peeps Through The Leaves Of The Trees Above A Well-mown Lawn? Every Possible Nightmare In The World, Every Possible Nightmare In History, Has Come Into Being Like This.