What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving...

The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.

Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning ‘love’ in this world. It is the effort to join reality with the apparition.

…Shunsuké hated the preoccupation with modern psychology that judged his casual, offhand remarks or his daily actions as betraying his identity or ideas with better clarity than did his highly polished sentences.

To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not be loved, but at the final stage I had substituted desire for love...