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… - Osamu Dazai

The only reason you helped me out was because I’m a tortoise and my tormentors were children. To intervene between a tortoise and children isn’t likely to bring about much in the way of repercussions. What did you give them—five coppers? That’s big money to a child, but it’s not much skin off your back, is it? I thought you’d put up a bit more than that. Miserly isn’t the word. How do you think it makes me feel? Five coppers for my life. For you it was just a whim of the moment. ‘A few coppers to rescue a tortoise—oh, hell, why not?’ But suppose it wasn’t children teasing a tortoise but, say, a group of rowdy fishermen tormenting some sickly beggar. Would you have offered so much as a single copper? Hardly. You would have scowled and hurried past, not wanting to get involved.

Most women have only to lay eyes on you to want to be doing something for you so badly they can’t stand it […] You’re always so timid and yet you’re funny […] Sometimes you get terribly lonesome and depressed, but that only makes a woman’s heart itch all the more for you.

It is painful for the plant which is myself to live in the atmosphere and light of this world. Somewhere an element is lacking which would permit me to continue.