كان الاضطرار إلى الحياة أكثر سواداً من أشد ضروب السواد افتقاراً للمرح, أن يضطر كل يوم لرؤية رجل يسعى لفهم أعمق شيء بداخله, وينجح في ذلك. - Yukio Mishima

The arrows have eaten into the tense, fragrant, youthful flesh and are about to consume his body from within with flames of supreme agony and ecstasy. But there is no flowing blood, nor yet the host of arrows seen in other pictures of Sebastian’s martyrdom. Instead, two lone arrows cast their tranquil and graceful shadows upon the smoothness of his skin, like the shadows of a bough falling upon a marble stairway...

I was born with gloomy nature. I do not think I have ever known what it is to be cheerful and at ease.

The groups of muscles that have become virtually unnecessary in modern life, though still a vital element of a man’s body, are obviously pointless from a practical point of view, and bulging muscles are as unnecessary as a classical education is to the majority of practical men. Muscles have gradually become something akin to classical Greek. To revive the dead language, the discipline of the steel was required; to change the silence of death into the eloquence of life, the aid of steel was essential.