There could be joy in destruction, too, couldn’t there? Isn’t Jesus Christ’s Second Coming supposed to occur only after a lot of unmitigated destruct… - Kenzaburō Ōe

The fundamental style of my writing has been to start from my personal matters and then to link it up with society, the state and the world.

I don’t have faith nor do I think I will have it in the future, but I’m not an atheist. My faith is that of a secular person. You might call it “morality.” Throughout my life I have acquired some wisdom but always through rationality, thought, and experience. I am a rational person and I work only through my own experience. My lifestyle is that of a secular person, and I have learned about human beings that way

I think the question for him is, how is a faithless person to cope with life. This is where he believes he can find something upon which to establish a literary career. You know, don’t you, how often he talks of Yeats? This goes way back, to when he was very young.