A Samurai Is A Total Human Being,

He Had Never Looked Forward To The Wisdom And Other Vaunted Benefits Of Old Age. Would He Be Able To Die Young—and If Possible Free Of All Pain? A Graceful Death—as A Richly Patterned Kimono, Thrown Carelessly Across A Polished Table, Slides Unobtrusively Down Into The Darkness Of The Floor Beneath. A Death Marked By Elegance.

The Cynicism That Regards Hero Worship As Comical Is Always Shadowed By A Sense Of Physical Inferiority

Dreams, Memories, The Sacred--they Are All Alike In That They Are Beyond Our Grasp. Once We Are Even Marginally Separated From What We Can Touch, The Object Is Sanctified; It Acquires The Beauty Of The Unattainable, The Quality Of The Miraculous. Everything, Really, Has This Quality Of Sacredness, But We Can Desecrate It At A Touch. How Strange Man Is! His Touch Defiles And Yet He Contains The Source Of Miracles.

As Long As You Know I Am Waiting, Take Your Time Flowers Of The Spring.

..and Certain That Life Consisted Of A Few Simple Signals And Decisions; That Death Took Root At The Moment Of Birth And Man’s Only Recourse Thereafter Was To Water And Tend It; That Propagation Was A Fiction; Consequently, Society Was A Fiction Too; That Fathers And Teachers, By Virtue Of Being Fathers And Teachers, Were Guilty Of A Grievous Sin.