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It seems to me that before the photograph can exist as art it must, by its very nature choose whether it is to be a record or a testimony.

Yukio Mishima

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Yukio Mishima
Age: 45 †
Born: 1925
Born: January 14
Died: 1970
Died: November 25
Actor
Author
Critic
Essayist
Film Actor
Film Director
Lyricist
Military Personnel
Model
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Screenwriter
City of Tokyo
Mishima Yukio
Kimitake Hiraoka
Hiraoka Kimitake
Exist
Choose
Records
Whether
Art
Nature
Testimony
Seems
Photograph
Must
Record

More quotes by Yukio Mishima

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Actually the action called a kiss represented nothing more for me than some place where my spirit could seek shelter.
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We are not wounded so deeply when betrayed by the things we hope for as when betrayed by things we try our best to despise. In such betrayal comes the dagger in the back.
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The mind, by its very nature, persistently tries to live forever, resisting age and attempting to give itself a form... . When a person passes his prime and his life begins to lose true vigor and charm, his mind starts functioning as if it were another form of life it imitates what life does, eventually doing what life cannot do.
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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.
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When silence is prolonged over a certain period of time, it takes on new meaning.
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When people concentrate on the idea of beauty, they are, without realizing it, confronted with the darkest thoughts that exist in this world. That, I suppose, is how human beings are made.
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Was I ignorant, then, when I was seventeen? I think not. I knew everything. A quarter-century's experience of life since then has added nothing to what I knew. The one difference is that at seventeen I had no 'realism'.
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A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.
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Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit-until Christianity invented it.
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The period of childhood is a stage on which time and space become entangled.
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Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result
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Other people must be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed.
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I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire of possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself.
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Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.
Yukio Mishima
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His emotion evident in the glitter of his eyes.
Yukio Mishima
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I cried sobbingly until at last those visions reeking with blood came to comfort me. And then I surrendered myself to them, to those deplorably brutal visions, my most intimate friends.
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For a long time I had not approached the forbidden fruit called happiness, but it was now tempting me with a melancholy persistence. I felt as though Sonoko were an abyss above which I stood poised.
Yukio Mishima
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I still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line.
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Human life is limited but I would like to live forever.
Yukio Mishima
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The images which the [press] photographer has filtered from reality, whether particular events or the anguish of human reactions to them, already bear a stamp of authenticity which the photographer is powerless to alter by one jot or tittle the meaning of the objects, by a process of purification, itself becomes the theme of the work.
Yukio Mishima