Quotes from Osamu Dazai

If my neighbors manage to survive without killing themselves, without going mad, maintaining an interest in political parties, not yielding to despair, resolutely pursuing the fight for existence, can their griefs really be genuine?

Everything passes.

My eyes would swim in my head, and the whole world grow dark before me, so that I felt half out of my mind.

The "world," after all, was still a place of bottomless horror.

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.

I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world. My only ally is the tagged dissolute. The tagged dissolute. That is the only cross on which I wish to be crucified. Though ten thousand people criticize me, I can throw in their teeth my challenge: Are you not all the more dangerous for being without tags?

She lay down beside me, Towards dawn she pronounced for the first time the word "death." She too seemed to be weary beyond endurance of the task of being a human being; and when I reflected on my dread of the world and its bothersomeness, on money, the movement, women, my studies, it seemed impossible that I could go on living. I consented easily to her proposal.

I have sometimes thought that I have been burdened with a pack of ten misfortunes, any one of which if borne by my neighbor would be enough to make a murderer out of him.

The wound has gradually become dearer to me than my own flesh and blood, and I have thought its pain to be the emotion of the wound as it lived or even its murmur of affection

In the present world, the most beautiful thing is a victim.

The real things are apt to be deviant.

I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theater for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the main entrance; I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied.

God, I ask you. Is trustfulness a sin?

Having said that, I must now admit that I was still afraid of human beings, and before I could meet even the customers in the bar I had to fortify myself by gulping down a glass of liquor. The desire to see frightening things—that was what drew me every night to the bar where, like the child who squeezes his pet all the harder when he actually fears it a little, I proclaimed to the customers standing at the bar my drunken, bungling theories of art.

Logic, inevitably, is the love of logic. It is not the love for living human beings.

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

They scolded us for not having any real hopes or real ambitions, but if we were to pursue our true ideals, would these people watch and guide us along the way?

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.

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.

Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgment on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men quite capable of tranquilly urging the Emperor to open a fruit shop.

Whenever anyone criticized me I felt certain that I had been living under the most dreadful misapprehension. I always accepted the attack in silence, though inwardly so terrified as almost to be out of my mind.

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

I am sure that the reason why I wept and stormed as if I had gone off my head was that the combination of physical exhaustion and my unhappiness had made me hate and resent everything.

I would far prefer to be told simply to go and die. It's straightforward. But people almost never say, "Die!" Paltry, prudent hypocrites!