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“Only through the group, I realised — through sharing the suffering of the group — could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimpsed, a dissolution of individuality was necessary. The tragic quality of the group was also necessary, the quality that constantly raised the group out of the abandon and torpor into which it was prone to lapse, leading it to an ever-mounting shared suffering and so to death, which was the ultimate suffering. The group must be open to death — which meant, of course, that it must be a community of warriors.”
― Yukio Mishima, Sun & Steel

“Why were things wrong just as they were? The questions which I had asked myself numberless times since boyhood rose again to my lips. Why are we all burdened with the duty to destroy everything, change everything, entrust everything to impermanency? Is it this unpleasant duty that the world calls life? Or am I the only one for whom it is a duty?”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority.”
― Yukio Mishima, Sun & Steel

“It is a rather risky matter to discuss a happiness that has no need of words.”
― Yukio Mishima, Sun & Steel