«Quando si vede un arcobaleno si ha l’impressione di essere tra la primavera e l’estate.» - Yasunari Kawabata

Long accustomed to a life of self-indulgent solitude, he began to yearn for the beauty of giving himself to others. The nobility of the word 'sacrifice' became clear to him. He took satisfaction in the feeling of his own littleness as a single seed whose purpose was to carry forward from the past into the future the life of the species called humanity. He even sympathized with the thought that the human species, together with the various kinds of minerals and plants, was no more than a small pillar that helped support a single vast organism adrift in the cosmos — and with the thought that it was no more precious than the other animals and plants.

كيف تسنى لثدى الأنثى البشرية وحدها من بين جميع الحيوانات أن يتخذ بعد تطور طويل هذا الشكل الرائع أليس الجمال الذى بلغه نهد المرأة المثال الأبهى لتطور الإنسانية . ص 35

The bonds between men and women predate language, and while the words we have used to express those ties may have grown exceptionally subtle and refined since language first arose, they are still just words. Words make our loves richer and more complicated, yes, but much has also been lost on their account - shrouded in the trappings of the age, drunk on the vacuity of artificial thrills. The progress of language is both a friend to love between the sexes and its enemy. Such love abides, it seems, in the mysterious depths where language cannot reach. Perhaps it's a slight exaggeration to say that the language of love is a stimulant, a drug; but whatever led us humans to create such a language , it was not life itself - which is the root of love - and therefore that language cannot engender the life that is the root of all else.