When a captive lion steps out of his cage, he comes into a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there w… - Yukio Mishima

Жаркото слънце напичаше високо подстриганите им вратове. Беше спокоен,безметежен, прекрасен неделен следобед. Въпреки това Кийоаки продължаваше да вярва,че на дъното на този свят, подобен на пълна с вода кожена чанта, има малка дупка и той чува как времето изтича от нея капка по капка.

I had formed the habit of treating those parts of my character that were in any way my responsibility to exhortations so wholesome and sensible as to be comical. As a part of my system of self-discipline, dating from childhood, I constantly told myself it would be better to die than become a lukewarm person, an unmanly person, a person who does not clearly know his likes and dislikes, a person who wants only to be loved without knowing how to love. This exhortation of course had a possible applicability to the parts of my character for which I was to blame, but so far as the other parts were concerned, the parts for which I was not to blame, it was an impossible requirement from the beginning.

Japan was to be married, not to Hitler, but to the German forests; not to Mussolini, but to the Roman pantheon. It was a pact joining German, Roman, and Japanese mythology: a friendship among the beautiful, masculine, pagan gods of East and West.