Osamu Dazai Quotes

This novel was doomed from the start. All posture and no substance. Whether I write one page or a hundred, it amounts to the same thing. Though I knew this from the start.

The next morning was peaceful and clear. The sea was calm. White smoke from the volcano on Oshima, just above the horizon, drifted up into the sky.
Never mind. I hate describing scenery.

Beautiful feelings make bad literature. In which case, this precious state of prose is proof that I'm no devil after all. Ah, blessed be the man who coined this phrase! It is a treasure of the language. An author can get away with using it but once in his career. Sad to say. The first time, it's endearing. If you insist on using it a second or a third time, though, dear reader, hiding behind it like a shield, you can expect nothing but misery.

It was only natural for Yozo to vacillate when asked about the reason behind his suicide – it was everything to him.

Welcome to Sadness. Population one.

Even now, I barely have the strength to reread what I've written.

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

A man crushed by reality puts on a show of endurance. If that's beyond your comprehension, dear reader, then you and I will never understand each other. Life's a farce, so we might as well make it a good one. But real life is a realm that I may never reach. The best that I can hope for is to loiter in the memory of these four days, so steeped with empathy. Four days that count more than five or ten years of my life. Four days that count more than a lifetime.

But in my softness I find peace, however fleeting.

How cruel of you. What part of what you see here is carefree? If only you could understand the sadness of the ones who grow the delicate flowers of buffoonery, protecting them from but the slightest gust of wind and always on the verge of despair!

Shame on me for making such a mockery of myself. Blame it on my wounded pride. The fact is that my fear of being ridiculed is so intense I'd rather beat my critics to the punch. That's the epitome of cowardice.

One lies to seek a bit of relief from a ponderous, suffocating reality, but the liar, like the drinker, gradually comes to need larger and larger doses. The lies become blacker and more complex, and they mesh and rub together until in the end they shine with the luster of truth.

A life free of lies! Ah, but that, too, was, by definition, a lie. Surely a lie already dwelled in the heart of anyone who sought to make such distinctions and stand in judgment.

I have suffered much at the hands of human society. Forgive me if I seem overly suspicious.

Any connoisseur knows you've got to be drunk to really enjoy a good romance.