That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and takes the form of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony o… - Yasunari Kawabata

The stars, almost too many of them to be true, came forward so brightly that it was as if they were falling with the swiftness of the void.

As it became clear to Shimamura that he had from the start wanted only this woman, and that he had taken his usual roundabout way of saying so, he began to see himself as rather repulsive and the woman as all the more beautiful

In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted into a sort of symbolic world not of this world. Particularly when a light out in the mountains shone in the centre of the girl's face, Shimamura felt his chest rise at the inexpressible beauty of it.