Alex

“Yes. She’s an interesting woman. You’ll like her,” I said, with no idea at all if he would like her.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

“of my tragic flaws is the compulsion to add some sort of embellishment to every situation—a quality which has made people call me at times a liar—but I have almost never embellished in order to bring myself any advantage; it was rather that I had a strangulating fear of that cataclysmic change in the atmosphere the instant the flow of a conversation flagged, and even when I knew that it would later turn to my disadvantage, I frequently felt obliged to add, almost inadvertently, my word of embellishment, out of a desire to please born of my usual desperate mania for service.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“In the afternoon they tied me up with a thin hemp rope. I was allowed to hide the rope under my coat when we went outside, but the young policeman gripped the end of the rope firmly. We went to Yokohama on the streetcar. The experience hadn’t upset me in the least. I missed the custody room in the police station and even the old policeman. What, I wonder, makes me that way? When they tied me up as a criminal I actually felt relieved—a calm, relaxed feeling. Even now as I write down my recollections of those days I feel a really expansive, agreeable sensation.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I feigned an air of utter dejection.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human