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

Nevertheless, I still wait for someone. Who on earth am I waiting for, sitting here everyday? For what sort of person? Maybe what I'm waiting for isn't even a human. I dislike humans. No, I fear them. When I meet someone and indifferently exchange such greetings as 'How are you?' or 'It's become cold', greetings I don't want to make, I somehow get the unpleasant feeling that there is no such horrible liar in the whole world as I, and I wish I were dead.

Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.

Not long ago I learned from a certain person in considerable detail about the worthlessness of your character. All the same, it is you who have given me strength, you who have put the rainbow of revolution in my breast. It is you who have given an object to my life.