I really hope that the Japanese are going to stop demonstrating to the world what man-made radiation does to people.

I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.College transported me to a new town, where I tried, one more time, to reinvent myself. Becoming someone new, I could correct the errors of my past. At first I was optimistic: I could pull it off. But in the end, no matter where I went, I could never change. Over and over I made the same mistake, hurt other people, and hurt myself in the bargain.Just after I turned twenty, this thought hit me: Maybe I've lost the chance to ever be a decent human being. The mistakes I'd committed— maybe they were part of my very makeup, an inescapable part of my being. I'd hit rock bottom, and I knew it.

It's a saying they have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where.

It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she were gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.

It was as if-this is something I thought of only later, of course-she was gently peeling bcd one layer after another hat covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.

There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can't. And time passing is one thing that can't be undone. Come this far, and you can't go back.

It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she was gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.

Oh I'm sure you're right, Auntie said. Probably she's just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears.

A feeling of liberation should contain a bracing feeling of negation, in which liberation itself is not negated. In the moment a captive lion steps out of his cage, he possesses a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds to him; the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage. Etsuko however, had in her heart not the slightest interest in these matters. Her soul knew nothing but affirmation.

Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (...) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit.