Osamu Dazai

I have never managed to understand what human life is.

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,

"I like roses best. But they bloom in all four seasons. I wonder if people who like roses best have to die four times over again."

People always plunged me into horror. I even believed that I hadn't succeeded as a man, and as a result, I hid my torment in my heart of hearts.I tried hard to mask the melancholy and nervousness by wrapping myself in naive optimism and becoming an even bigger buffoon

I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result.

I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others.

I was frightened even by God. I could not believe in His love, only in His punishment.

The Yozo we knew was so easy-going and amusing, and if only be hadn't drunk—no, even though he did drink—he was a good boy, an angel."

I wait in momentary expectation, feeling as though my breasts are being crushed, for the sound in the corridor of the footsteps of happiness. Empty. Oh, life is too painful, the reality that confirms the universal belief that it is best not to be born.

Mine has been a life of much shame.