Osamu Dazai Quotes

As a child I had absolutely no notion of what others, even members of my own family, might be suffering or what they were thinking. I was aware only of my own unspeakable fears and embarrassments. Before anyone realized it, I had become an accomplished clown, a child who never spoke a single truthful word.

Young people never say anything straight. You can tell they're being honest if they hide behind a laugh.

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.

It is only too obvious that favoritism inevitably exists: it would have been useless to complain to human beings. So I said nothing of the truth.

Is this what all you refined gentlemen are like—wishing and pining and never acting?

She must be unhappy too. Unhappy people are sensitive to the unhappiness of others.

For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.

Without a flicker of hesitation I injected the morphine into my arm. My insecurity, fretfulness and timidity were swept away completely; I turned into an expansively optimistic and fluent talker. The injection made me forget how weak my body was, and I applied myself energetically to my cartoon.

Real thought takes courage more than intelligence.

Tomorrow will probably be another day like today. Happiness will never come my way. I know that. But it's probably best to go to sleep believing that it will surely come, tomorrow it will come. [...] You wait and wait for happiness, and when finally you can't bear it any longer, you rush out of the house, only to hear later that a marvelous happiness arrived the following day at the home you had abandoned, and now it was too late. Sometimes happiness arrives one night too late. Happiness...

I am congenitally unable to take much interest in other people.

Around that time, I lost interest in college. I could only see blackness before me, I didn’t know what to do. It was no easy matter to prevent my father from criticizing my loafing around the house and my mother from seeing me as unworthy.

If you’ve slept soundly at night the morning is exhilarating, I suppose.

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.

I'm going somewhere where there aren't any women.