Yet How Strange A Thing Is The

For A Long Time I Had Not Approached The Forbidden Fruit Called Happiness, But It Was Now Tempting Me With A Melancholy Persistence. I Felt As Though Sonoko Were An Abyss Above Which I Stood Poised.

Isao Had Never Felt That He Might Want To Be A Woman. He Had Never Wished For Anything Else But To Be A Man, Live In A Manly Way, Die A Manly Death. To Be Thus A Man Was To Give Constant Proof Of One's Manliness-to Be More A Man Today Than Yesterday, More A Man Tomorrow Than Today. To Be A Man Was To Forge Ever Upward Toward The Peak Of Manhood, There To Die Amid The White Snows Of That Peak.

The Period Of Childhood Is A Stage On Which Time And Space Become Entangled.

If We Value So Highly The Dignity Of Life, How Can We Not Also Value The Dignity Of Death No Death May Be Called Futile.

We Had Stretched Out Our Arms To Each Other And Supported Something In Our Joined Hands, But This Thing We Were Holding Was Like A Sort Of Gas That Exists When You Believe In Its Existence And Disappears When You Doubt. The Task Of Supporting It Seems Simple At First Glance, But Actually Requires An Ultimate Refinement Of Calculation And A Consummate Skill.