-Walking up and down beside the Hershey Almond bars stacked one upon another like precious ingots, I rub against the pack. A thousand smiles are raining from every direction; I lift my face as if to catch the shimmering dewdrops dispersed by a gentle breeze. Smiles, smiles. As if it weren't life and death, a race to the womb and back again. Flutter and froufrou, camphor and fish balls, Omega oil...wings spread full preen, limbs bare to the touch, palms moist, foreheads glistening, lips parched, tongues hanging out, teeth gleaming like the advertisements, eyes bright, roving, stripping one bare...piercing, penetrating eyes, some searching for gold, some for fuck, some to kill, but all bright, shamelessly, innocently bright like the lion's red maw, and pretending, yes, pretending, that it's a Saturday afternoon, a floor like any other floor, a cunt's a cunt, no tickee no fuckee, buy me, take me, squeeze me, all's well in Itchigumi, don't step on me, isn't it warm, yes, I love it, I do love it, bite me again, harder, harder...
-Great god! what have I turned into? What right have you people to clutter up my life, steal my time, probe my soul, suckle my thoughts, have me for your companion, confidant, and information bureau? What do you take me for? Am I an entertainer on salary, required every evening to play an intellectual farce under your stupid noses? Am I a slave, bought and paid for, to crawl on my belly in front of you idlers and lay at your feet all that I do and all that I know? Am I a wench in a brothel who is called upon to lift her skirts or take off her chemise at the bidding of the first man in a tailored suit who comes along?
I am a man who would live an heroic life and make the world more endurable in his own sight. If, in some moment of weakness, of relaxation, of need, I blow off steam -- a bit of red-hot rage cooled off in words -- a passionate dream, wrapped and tied in imagery -- well, take it or leave it...but don't bother me.
I am a free man -- and I need my freedom. I need to be alone...I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiousity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me! Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to any one.
-the man who is reborn is always the same man, more and more himself with each rebirth. He is only shedding his skin each time, and with his skin his sins. To shed the first layer is painful beyond words; the next layer is less painful, the next still less, until finally the pain becomes pleasurable, more and more pleasurable, a delight, an ecstasy!