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The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea QUOTES

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea QUOTES

1 " Suddenly the full long wail of a ship's horn surged through the open window and flooded the dim room - a cry of boundless, dark, demanding grief; pitch-black and glabrous as a whale's back and burdened with all the passions of the tides, the memory of voyages beyond counting, the joys, the humiliations: the sea was screaming. Full of the glitter and the frenzy of night, the horn thundered in, conveying from the distant offing, from the dead center of the sea, a thirst for the dark nectar in the little room. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

2 " They had laid the tender, down-ruffled little bird on a platter and appeared now to be pondering a way to eat out its heart without causing it distress. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

3 " And it seemed increasingly obvious that the world would have to topple if he was to attain the glory that was rightfully his. They were consubstantial: glory and the capsized world. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

4 " The only people in this world I really trust are my fans - even if they do forget you so fast. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

5 " An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

6 " A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn't even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

7 " This time, Fusako was able to express herself with fluency and candor. The bold letters she had been writing week after week had granted her an unexpected new freedom. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

8 " To Ryuji the smile seemed as brittle as fine glass crystal and very dangerous "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

9 " Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at sea will compel him once again to dream of it, torment him with the absurdity of longing for something that he loathes. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

10 " His father, a civil servant, had raised him and his sister singlehanded after their mother’s death; the sickly old man had worked overtime in order to send Ryuji to school; despite everything, Ryuji had grown up into a strong, healthy man; late in the war his home had been destroyed in an air raid and his sister had died of typhus shortly after; he had graduated from the merchant-marine high school and was just starting on his career when his father died too; his only memories of life on shore were of poverty and sickness and death, of endless devastation; by becoming a sailor, he had detached himself from the land for ever. ... It was the first time he had talked of these things at such length to a woman. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

11 " Since dark antiquity the words have been spoken by women of every caste to sailors in every port; words of docile acceptance of the horizon's authority, of reckless homage to that mysterious azure boundary; words never failing to bestow on even the haughtiest woman the sadness, the hollow hopes, and the freedom of the whore: 'You'll be leaving in the morning, won't you?... "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

12 " Se había entregado al trabajo con la esperanza de haberlo ya olvidado, pero cuando dejaba la tienda el último cliente y el local quedaba en calma, le llegaba el burbujeo de la fuente del patio y, al escucharlo, el terror la asediaba. Entonces, se daba cuenta de que estaba esperando... "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

13 " Me siento responsable de la carne de esta mujer, pues me desgarra dulcemente como lo hacen otras cosas que son mías. Me estremece la dulzura de su presencia: cuando me sienta temblar se volcará como la hoja de un árbol sacudido por el viento y dejará que yo vea el lado vacío de sus ojos. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

14 " ..Claro está que vivir no es más que el caos de la existencia, y más aún: es el afán loco y erróneo de ir desmantelando instante a instante la existencia hasta ver restaurado el caos inicial.. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

15 " Even as he spoke, the boy appeared to have forgotten the subject, as if it was a balloon he had abandoned to the sky. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

16 " Real danger is nothing more than just living. Of course, living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it's a crazy mixed-up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored, and taking strength from the uncertainty and the fear that chaos brings to re-create existence instant by instant. You won't find another job as dangerous as that. There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

17 " ...living is merely the chaos of existence... "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

18 " There's a huge seal called 'impossibility' pasted all over this world. And don't ever forget that we're the only ones who can tear it off once and for all. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

19 " There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

20 " Still immersed in his dream, he drank down the tepid tea. It tasted bitter. Glory, as anyone knows, is bitter stuff. "

― Yukio Mishima , The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea