Osamu Dazai Quotes

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

No. You won't do. You've treated me nicely, yes, but only because you find me curious and amusing. It made me feel so lonely, somehow... I'm really just a foolish and useless person.

I yearned for everything long gone.

I am afraid because I can so clearly foresee my own life rotting away of itself, like a leaf that rots without falling, while I pursue my round of existence from day to day.

Item. A hand in plaster. This was the right hand of Venus. A hand like a dahlia blossom, a pure white hand, mounted on a stand. But if you looked at it carefully you could tell how this pure white, delicate hand, with whorl-less finger tips and unmarked palms, expressed, so pitifully that even the beholder was stabbed with pain, the shame intense enough to make Venus stop her breath; in the gesture was implicit the moment when Venus' full nakedness was seen by a man, when she twisted away her body, flushed all over with the prickling warmth of her shock, the whirlwind of her shame, and the tragedy of her nudity. Unfortunately, this was only a piece of bric-à-brac. The clerk valued it at fifty sen.

I’m going to paint too. I’m going to paint pictures of ghosts and devils and horses out of hell.

Good night. I'm Cinderella without her prince. Do you know where to find me in Tokyo? You won't see me again.

Mother, recently I have discovered the one way in which human beings differ completely from other animals. Man has, I know, language, knowledge, principles, and social order, but don't all the other animals have them too, granted the difference of degree? Perhaps the animals even have religions. Man boasts of being the lord of all creation, but it would seem as if essentially he does not differ in the least from other animals. But, Mother, there was one way I thought of. Perhaps you won't understand. It's a faculty absolutely unique to man - having secrets. Can you see what I mean?

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

I must go on living. And, though it may be childish of me, I can't go on in simple compliance. From now on I must struggle with the world. I thought that Mother might well be the last of those who can end their lives beautifully and sadly, struggling with no one, neither hating nor betraying anyone. In the world to come there will be no room for such people. The dying are beautiful, but to live, to survive – those things somehow seem hideous and contaminated with blood.

Women sleep so soundly they seem to be dead. Who knows? Women may live in order to sleep.

[...]books. I would scorn the pointless, haughty posturing, scorn its abstracted way of living. There I go again—pondering the purposelessness of my day-to-day life, wishing I had more ambition, and lamenting all the contradictions in myself—when I know it's just sentimental nonsense. All I'm doing is indulging myself, trying to console myself.

When I liked something I tasted it hesitantly, furtively, as though it were extremely bitter.

Before anyone realized it, I had become an accomplished clown.