Literary Mischief Quotes

“Decadence is the mother of conventions, And a good long hard look at the sad fact of the human condition is really all we need”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“With the vicissitudes of the human race stretching out before us for all eternity, the life of any one of us seems as fleeing as the morning dew. To speak, then, of immutable systems, eternal happiness, and the like, making predictions about what the future holds is an act of impudent nonsense and nothing more”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“Some people think that the “women of the night” reflect a defect in the social order, but who is to say that most of them do not find their current work more interesting than the conscripted service they performed wrapped around industrial machinery? We must no jump to the conclusion that dressing women in uniforms and ordering them around the factory is necessarily the more wholesome alternative”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“Human life is fleeting, and yet man remains wildly optimistic—a contradiction-riddled, unpredictable, scatterbrained creature, to be sure”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“Literature, at ever turn of the road, is an act of rebellion against the establishment, against politics. It is an act of revenge worked by humans on systems of all sorts. Paradoxically, in its rebellion and revenge, literature is complicit with politics. The revolt is itself a form of complicity. It represents a certain affection. Such is the fate of the literary act; literature and politics exist in just such an eternally unchanging relationship”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“Politics and social systems cast only the coarsest of nets over the world, and humans are the type of fish that will forever slip through the holes. Even should we demolish that contrivance that is the emperor system and institute some new structure in its place; that, too, would be nothing more than a more highly evolved contrivance. While it is our fate to be forever trapped within this cycle, humans will always slip through the cracks. They will be decadent, and the systems will thereby get their comeuppance”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“the more advanced a culture becomes, the harsher will be that clash between individuals. In primitive societies there were no households per se, only rather loose affiliations of men and women. In this state, jealousy was hardly a factor and rarely did individuals square off. But as culture advanced and the household unit gelled, the competition between individuals intensified and became increasingly harsh. … To spout platitudes about human happiness while ignoring the conflicts between families and individuals is ridiculous, beyond measure”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“To be decadent is, always, to stand alone, to be abandoned by others, to be forsaken by parents. To be decadent is to accept a destiny where we have no choice but to stand on our own two feet. Being good puts us in a comfortable position, one that allows us to rest easy in the empty values and conventions shared by our families and the human race”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“To offer only superficial niceties and expect to be rewarded with truth is unreasonable. We must risk our very own flesh and blood; we must be willing to wail for truth. When a fall into decadence is called for, let us fall straight and let us fall hard. Let all morals dissipate, let confusion reign. Let the blood flow, let the poison course through our veins. Only after we have first passed through the gates of hell might we claw out way into the heavens. With every fingernail, every toenail, covered in blood and torn from its place we will inch our way toward heaven. Is there any other way?”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“Decadence itself is a bad thing, of course, but how are we to grasp the truth about ourselves if we do not put something on the line?”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“What is the attitude that people, humans, should adopt? In a word it is as simple as this: we must honestly acknowledge our desires and dislikes. When we like something, we should come right out and say so. When we love a woman we should let the world know. The conventions of polite society, the taboos on romance, the rules dictating the places of duty and emotion—we should strip ourselves of these fraudulent kimonos and stand with our naked hearts fully exposed. To look long and hard at ourselves as restored to this naked state is the primary condition for a resurrection of our humanity. It is only then that we will enjoy a true birth without nature as humans intact; it is only then that our true history will begin”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“We were possessed by that hoax that history has produced, and because of it we have lost sight of what is means to be truly, authentically human”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“In Japan, however, the desire to satisfy one’s needs is considered the eptome of laziness. Instead, Japan labels austerity a virtue. …They claim that forgetting the value of hard manual labor as we relied more on technology is what led to the loss of our sovereignty. In fact, however, every one of these claims is entirely backwards. The truth wins out. The truth saw to it that we got what we deserved. Was it not precisely our reliance on manual labor and our obsession with enduring hardship that brought upon us the tragic loss of sovereignty that we suffer from today?”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“Truth be told, the emperor didn’t know what was going on. He was not giving orders. It was all conducted according to the will of the military. First, they told us that an incident had occurred in some corner of Manchuria. Next the reported hostilities breaking out in Northern China. Shockingly, even the prime minister had not been informed of the actual situation in these cases. The military had run completely amok. And still this so-called military blindly worshiped the emperor as, all the while, they ignored him and committed blasphemy against him. What nonsense! This is the height of absurdity”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“The glorious virtues of the farming communities are perseverance and austerity, or so they day. But what is so virtuous about enduring poverty? Think instead of the saying “necessity is the mother of invention.” Here is where we’ll find creativity, culture, and progress—precisely where people do not endure poverty, do not stand for inconvenience, and instead pursue the things that are needed”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“How could there be any real without discoveries of the new and unfamiliar? How could there be any real culture where there is no introspection?”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“We fall because we’re human; we fall because we are alive. Nevertheless, humans cannot fall forever because they’re not immune to emotional hardship. Humans are pathetic, they’re frail, they’re laughable. All the same, they’re simply too weak to fall to the very bottom. Sooner or later they just have to sacrifice virgins of their own making, piece together warrior codes and emperor systems that are truly their own, then they first must follow the path of decadence, falling properly and to the very bottom. Japan, too, must fall. Only by falling to the very depths can it discover itself and thereby attain salvation. Redemption through politics is but a surface phenomenon and not worth much of anything”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“Humans. Though the war brought down on them colossal devastation and violent twists of fate, it hasn’t really altered the human condition. Now that the war is over, the brave kamikaze pilots are black marketeers and the war widows find their hearts pounding over someone new. Humans haven’t changed; they’ve just reverted to their original state. Humans fall into decadence. Noble warriors and saintly women fall into decadence. There’s no preventing it, and prevention wouldn’t bring salvation even if it were possible. Humans live, humans fall”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“Humans can never attain true freedom. The reasons? We live, we’re destined to die, and we think. Sure, political reforms can be enacted in a single day, but changing human kind isn’t so easy. Just think about it—the ancient Greeks discovered the true potential of humankind and they took the first step toward realizing it, but how much progress have we really made since then?”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“War time Japan was an unbelievably idyllic utopia—the only problem is that the beauty that bloomed there was empty, false. It was not a truly human beauty. But as long as we didn’t stop to think, wartime Japan offered a pleasing grand spectacle that was hard to beat. Though the next bombing was a constant threat, if we could only push this from our minds, we were free to just sit back and lose ourselves in the drama of it all. I was a fool through the war, naively making a game of it”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“The heroism of the kamikaze pilots is nothing more than an illusion; their real history as humans starts the moment they set up shop in the black market. The saintliness of the war widows too, is but a pipe dream; their true history begins the moment they start to dream of another man. The same is true for the emperor. He is an apparition whose true history would only start the moment he becomes an ordinary man”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“People who have scrambled to safety through the raging fires would huddle near a home that was starting to burn so as to warm themselves in the cold. They would only be a few feet away from others struggling to douse the flames, but these people would be in a different world entirely. Massive destruction side-by-side with startling camaraderie. Grand destinies alongside surprising tenderness”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“History is not a chain of autonomous eras distinguished by distinct political systems. It is, rather, itself a massive independent living organism. History absorbs all the particular phenomena that have emerged up to that point and is tremendously influenced by them”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“If you want to understand the mechanisms driving history, don’t rely on the documents. Just take a good hard look at what lies within your own scheming heart”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“though we may actually be pondering death, we do so from a safe remove and so really are just fooling ourselves. We think with an awareness that our own lives are probably not in danger, so any victory over our fear of death, no matter how thorough we think it to be, is just not the same thing”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“As long as we live sincerely, apish imitation is nothing to be ashamed of. If It is an integral part of our everyday lives, apish imitation is as precious as creativity”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“The destruction of the temples in Kyoto or the Buddhist statues in Nara wouldn’t bother us in the least, but we’d be in real trouble if the streetcars stopped working”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“The only thing that matters to us are the “necessities of life.” Though ancient culture may be destroyed, our day-to-day lives would not come to an end, and as long as these are intact, our uniqueness is assured”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“It is quite conceivable that customs followed in foreign countries and not in Japan are, in fact, better suited to the Japanese. Adopting foreign customs would not be an act of imitation, but rather one of self discovery. Even in the arts, a field with the utmost respect for originality, the progression from imitation to discovery is a common occurrence, as we see in Goethe completing masterpieces of his own after having taken his cues from Shakespeare. Inspiration often has roots in an imitative spirit and bears fruit in an original discovery”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief

“The concepts of “tradition” and “national character” often mislead us in just this way. They imply that regardless of personality, and individual is driven by some innate urge to abide by certain customs and traditions”
― James Dorsey, Literary Mischief