Catherine

“She drank like a drowning man helplessly swallowing sea water, in accordance with some law of nature. To ask for nothing means that one has lost one’s freedom to choose or reject. Once having decided that, one has no choice but to drink anything — even sea water….

Afterwards, however, Etsuko felt none of the nausea of a drowning person. Until the moment of her death, it seemed, no one would know she was drowning. She did not call out — she was a woman bound and gagged by her own hand.”
― Yukio Mishima, Thirst for Love

“Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one’s own heart.”
― Yukio Mishima, Thirst for Love

“The highest point at which human life and art meet is in the ordinary. To look down on the ordinary is to despise what you can't have. Show me a man who fears being ordinary, and I'll show you a man who is not yet a man.”
― Yukio Mishima, Thirst for Love

“Look at it, a whole drawerful, men and women, every one of them a real executive, or auditor, or manager of some business, and when I recommend one, I know somebody is getting something for his money. They're all home, sitting by their phones, hoping I'll call. I won't call. I've got nothing to tell them. What I'm trying to get through your head is: You haven't got a chance. Those people, it hurts me, it makes me lie awake nights, that I've got nothing for them. They deserve something, and there's not a thing I can do. But there's not a chance I'd slip you ahead of any one of them. You're not qualified. There's not a thing on earth you can do, and I hate people that can't do anything.”
― James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce