Osamu Dazai

I have never managed to understand what human life is.

I thought of saying, "These aren't sleeping pills. They're a laxative!" but I burst out laughing. I think "reject" must be a comic noun. I had taken a laxative in order to go to sleep.

Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

Everything passes.

Just the other day I read through them for the first time."

"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."

when anger makes them reveal in a flash human nature in all its horror. Seeing this happen has always induced in me a fear great enough to make my hair stand on end, and at the thought that this nature might be one of the prerequisites for survival as a human being,

Given my lack of experience, if my books were taken away from me, I would be utterly devastated. That's how much I depend on what's written in books. I'll read one book and be completely wild about it—I'll trust it, I'll assimilate it, I'll sympathize with it, I'll try to make it a part of my life. Then, I'll read another book and, instantly, I'll switch over to that one.

Really, I don't know which is the true me. What ever will I do when there aren't any more books to read,

I wish I could die like this, as a girl.

I couldn't stand it. The body had no connection to my mind, it developed on its own accord, which was unbearable and bewildering. It made me miserable that I was rapidly becoming an adult and that I was unable to do anything about it.

Indeed, Mother and I are both as weak as the other.