Osamu Dazai Quotes

It isn't that I dislike artists, but I can't stand anyone who puts on those ponderous airs of a man of character.

By living this way, what will my fortune be? There is nothing. Am I simply a sickly man? What should I do? I had no direction, nothing. I thought that this reckless life of mine was only a nuisance to others and devoid of meaning. This was quite hard to bear.

It would seem that the more irresponsible and crafty one is, the more likely one is to have a talent for storytelling.

I had been so terrorized by scientific statistics (if ten million people each leave over three grains of rice from their lunch, how many sacks of rice are wasted in one day; if ten million people each economize one paper handkerchief a day, how much pulp will be saved?) that whenever I left over a single grain of rice, whenever I blew my nose, I imagined that I was wasting mountains of rice, tons of paper, and I fell prey to a mood dark as if I had committed some terrible crime. But these were the lies of science, the lies of statistics and mathematics: you can't collect three grains of rice from everybody.

The thought of dying has never bothered me, but getting hurt, losing blood, becoming crippled and the like—no thanks.

Each day I deceived myself, unlike you who could never deceive yourself. Anxiety was trapped in the depths of my heart, like a formation of black clouds I could not break free of.

The manner of speech of everybody in the world—held strange, elusive complexities, intricately presented with overtones of vagueness: I have always been baffled by these precautions so strict as to be useless, and by the intensely irritating little maneuvers surrounding them.

What, I wondered, did he mean by "society"? The plural of human beings?

Just as a man has the right to live, he ought also to have the right to die.

I hope I meet lots of people with lovely eyes.

Not long afterwards we were married. The joy I obtained as a result of this action was not necessarily great or savage, but the suffering which ensued was staggering—so far surpassing what I had imagined that even describing it as “horrendous” would not quite cover it. The world, after all, was still a place of bottomless horror. It was by no means a place of childlike simplicity where everything could be settled by a simple then-and-there decision.

Despising each other as we did, we were constantly together, thereby degrading ourselves. If that is what the world calls friendship, the relations between Horiki and myself were undoubtedly those of friendship.

What a holy thing uncorrupted virginity is, I thought.

I like to take my glasses off and look out into the distance. Everything goes hazy, as in a dream, or like a zoetrope—it's wonderful. I can't see anything that's dirty. Only big things—vivid intense colors and light are all that enters my vision. I also like to take my glasses off and look at people. The faces around me, all of them, seem kind and pretty and smiling. What's more, when my glasses are off, I don't ever think about arguing with anyone at all, nor do I feel the need to make snide remarks. All I do is just blankly stare in silence. During those moments, thinking that I must look like a nice young miss to everyone else, I don't worry about the gawking, I just want to bask in their attention, and I feel really and truly mellow.
But actually glasses are the worst. Any sense of your face disappears when you put them on. Glasses obstruct whatever emotions that might appear on your face—passion, grace, fury, weakness, innocence, sorrow. And it's curious how it becomes impossible to try to communicate with your eyes. Glasses are like a ghost. The reason I hate glasses so much is because I think the beauty of your eyes is the best thing about people.

In spite of my suffering, at the thought that I was sure to end up by killing myself, I cried aloud and burst into tears.