Osamu Dazai

my whole life consisted of embarrassment.

Mine has been a life of much shame.

I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.

I used the word “ugly” just now, but there are people who cannot tell the difference between ugliness and beauty

What, I wondered, did he mean by "society"? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called "society"? I had spent my whole life thinking that society must certainly be something powerful, harsh and severe, but to hear Horiki talk made the words "Don't you mean yourself?"

The smile is nothing more than a puckering of ugly wrinkles.

I thought of saying, "These aren't sleeping pills. They're a laxative!" but I burst out laughing. I think "reject" must be a comic noun. I had taken a laxative in order to go to sleep.

Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

Everything passes.

Just the other day I read through them for the first time."

"Did you cry?"

"No. I didn't cry . . . I just kept thinking that when human beings get that way, they're no good for anything."

when anger makes them reveal in a flash human nature in all its horror. Seeing this happen has always induced in me a fear great enough to make my hair stand on end, and at the thought that this nature might be one of the prerequisites for survival as a human being,

Given my lack of experience, if my books were taken away from me, I would be utterly devastated. That's how much I depend on what's written in books. I'll read one book and be completely wild about it—I'll trust it, I'll assimilate it, I'll sympathize with it, I'll try to make it a part of my life. Then, I'll read another book and, instantly, I'll switch over to that one.