Yogarshi

“I think about pinball, and how being a kid’s like being shot up the firing lane and there’s no veering left or right; or you’re just sort of propelled. But once you clear the top, like when you’re sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, suddenly there’s a thousand different paths you can take, some amazing, others not. Tiny little differences in angles and speed’ll totally alter what happens to you later, so a fraction of an inch to the right, and the ball’ll just hit a pinger and a dinger and fly down between your flippers, no messing, a waste of 10 p. But a fraction to the left and it’s action in the play zone, bumpers and kickers, ramps and slingshots and fame on the high-score table.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Purity, a concept that recalled flowers, the piquant mint taste of a mouthwash, a child clinging to its mother’s gentle breast, was something that joined all these directly to the concept of blood, the concept of swords cutting down iniquitous men, the concept of blades slashing down through the shoulder to spray the air with blood. And to the concept of seppuku. The moment that a samurai “fell like the cherry blossoms,” his blood-smeared corpse became at once like fragrant cherry blossoms. The concept of purity, then, could alter to the contrary with arbitrary swiftness. And so purity was the stuff of poetry. For Isao, to die purely seemed easy. But what about laughing purely? How to be pure in all respects was a problem that disturbed him. No matter how tight a rein he kept upon his emotions, there were times when some trivial thing would arise to make him laugh. Once, for example, he had laughed at a puppy frolicking at the side of the road, with a woman’s high-heeled shoe, of all things, in its mouth. It was the kind of laugh that he preferred others not to see.”
― Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses

“Controls is about fear, see. If you’re afraid enough of the reprisals, you don’t say no, you don’t fight back, you don’t run away. Saying yes is how you survive. It becomes normal. Horrible, but normal. Horrible, because it’s normal. Now, lucky you can say ‘Not standing up to him is giving him permission,’ but if you’ve been fed this diet since the year dot, there is no standing up. Victims aren’t cowards. Outsiders, like, they never have a clue how brave you have to be just to carry on.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“A writer flirts with schizophrenia, nurtures synesthesia, and embraces obsessive-compulsive disorder. Your art feeds on you, your soul, and, yes, to a degree, your sanity. Writing novels worth reading will bugger up your mind, jeopardize your relationships, and distend your life. You have been warned.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks