As I Gazed Over The Hot, Grassy Air Of The Burned-over Plain, I Felt As If It Was An Event In History.

As I gazed over the hot, grassy air of the burned-over plain, I felt as if it was an event in history. This too will become a memory. Everything passes. Like a dream. We are able to grasp nothing. And I too, I thought, was only the shadow of myself.

Sakaguchi Ango, “One Woman and the War”

I felt the power of love deeply. It was none other than love which made that foolish man think up such a clever trick.

Edogawa Ranpo, “The Black Hand Gang” from The Early Cases of Akechi Kogorō

Is it anyone’s fault that I who was once innocent as the whitest silk in constellations of stars would fall into this world?

- Yosano Akiko, River of Stars: Selected Poems of Yosano Akiko

I would have been happy to have you as a friend, a boss, an uncle, a grandfather, even indeed (though more hesitantly), as a father-in-law. It is only as a father that you were too strong for me {…}

— Franz Kafka, letter to his father

“You do not yet suffer enough to suit me.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra (via aryasnow)