Again And Again, The Cicada's

Young People Get The Foolish Idea That What Is New For Them Must Be New For Everybody Else Too. No Matter How Unconventional They Get, They're Just Repeating What Others Before Them Have Done.

If We Value So Highly The Dignity Of Life, How Can We Not Also Value The Dignity Of Death No Death May Be Called Futile.

Yet How Strange A Thing Is The Beauty Of Music! The Brief Beauty That The Player Brings Into Being Transforms A Given Period Of Time Into Pure Continuance; It Is Certain Never To Be Repeated; Like The Existence Of Dayflies And Other Such Short-lived Creatures, Beauty Is A Perfect Abstraction And Creation Of Life Itself. Nothing Is So Similar To Life As Music.

His Conviction Of Having No Purpose In Life Other Than To Act As A Distillation Of Poison Was Part Of The Ego Of An Eighteen-year-old. He Had Resolved That His Beautiful White Hands Would Never Be Soiled Or Calloused. He Wanted To Be Like A Pennant, Dependent On Each Gusting Wind. The Only Thing That Seemed Valid To Him Was To Live For The Emotions--gratuitous And Unstable, Dying Only To Quicken Again, Dwindling And Flaring Without Direction Or Purpose.

He Was In A Room Of The Gesshuuji, Which He Had Thought It Would Be Impossible To Visit. The Approach Of Death Had Made The Visit Easy, Had Unloosed The Weight That Held Him In The Depths Of Being. It Was Even A Comfort To Think, From The Light Repose The Struggle Up The Hill Had Brought Him, That Kiyoaki, Struggling Against Illness Up That Same Road, Had Been Given Wings To Soar With By The Denial That Awaited Him.