Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination. - Yukio Mishima

She drank like a drowning man helplessly swallowing sea water, in accordance with some law of nature. To ask for nothing means that one has lost one’s freedom to choose or reject. Once having decided that, one has no choice but to drink anything — even sea water….

Afterwards, however, Etsuko felt none of the nausea of a drowning person. Until the moment of her death, it seemed, no one would know she was drowning. She did not call out — she was a woman bound and gagged by her own hand.

Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.

That which proceeds from a man’s soul shall shape his soul; that which proceeds from his speech shall shape his speech, and deeds that proceed from his body shall shape his body.