# Quote — Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

> The black and slightly oblique trunk of the tree of execution was seen against a Titian-like background of gloomy forest and evening sky, sombre and distant. A remarkably handsome youth was bound naked to the trunk of the tree. His crossed hands were raised high, and the thongs binding his wrists were tied to the tree. No other bonds were visible, and the only covering for the youth’s nakedness was a coarse white cloth knotted loosely about his loins...

- Author: [Yukio Mishima](https://www.leafyquotes.com/yukio-mishima.md)
- Book: [Confessions of a Mask](https://www.leafyquotes.com/yukio-mishima/confessions-of-a-mask.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima#Confessions_of_a_Mask_(1949)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/yukio-mishima/confessions-of-a-mask/the-black-and

## More from this book

> My "act" has ended by becoming an integral part of my nature, I told myself. It's no longer an act. My knowledge that I am masquerading as a normal person has even corroded whatever of normality I originally possessed, ending by making me tell myself over and over again that it too was nothing but a pretense of normality. To say it another way, I'm becoming the sort of person who can't believe in anything except the counterfeit.

p. 153 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/yukio-mishima/confessions-of-a-mask/my-act-has.md)

> The arrows have eaten into the tense, fragrant, youthful flesh and are about to consume his body from within with flames of supreme agony and ecstasy. But there is no flowing blood, nor yet the host of arrows seen in other pictures of Sebastian’s martyrdom. Instead, two lone arrows cast their tranquil and graceful shadows upon the smoothness of his skin, like the shadows of a bough falling upon a marble stairway...

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/yukio-mishima/confessions-of-a-mask/the-arrows-have.md)

> At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it.

p. 118 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/yukio-mishima/confessions-of-a-mask/at-no-time.md)