Suppose I flay about me with my arms. As I do so, I lose a certain amount of intellectual blood. Suppose I allow myself, however briefly, to think before I strike. At that moment, my blow is doomed to failure.
Somewhere, I told myself, there must be a higher principle that manages to bring the two together and reconcile them.
That principle, it occurred to me, was death.
And yet, my idea of death was too mystical; I was forgetting the plain, physical aspect of death.
Yukio Mishima, Sun and Steel, pg. 92