“As I gazed upon all this beauty, I felt that now, for the first time in my life, I was really alive.”

— Kaneko Fumiko, The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman (1991), pp. 93-94

About Kaneko Fumiko

1903 – 1926

Japanese anarchist and writer whose prison memoirs were published after her death.

“Let your children play as they please! To play freely on this earth is the one privilege nature has given to children.”

“By nature human beings should be equal.”

“The virtue and beauty of human beings is to live naturally, ungoverned by external forces.”

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.”

“The great moral teachers of humanity were, in a way, artistic geniuses in the art of living.”

“Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient.”

“At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it.”

“I know of nothing useful in life except what is beautiful or creates beauty.”

“Life is earnest, art is gay.”