Shelly

“I should have died sooner. But there was one thing: Mama's love. When I thought of that I couldn't die. It's true, as I have said, that just as man has the right to live as he chooses, he has the right to die when he pleases, and yet as long as my mother remained alive, I felt that the right to death would have to be left in abeyance, for to exercise it would have meant killing her too.”
― Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun

“If it failed I had no choice but to hang myself, a resolve which was tantamount to a bet on the existence of God.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I had learned bit by bit the art of meeting people with a straight face—no, that’s not true: I have never been able to meet anyone without an accompaniment of painful smiles, the buffoonery of defeat. What I had acquired was the technique of stammering somehow, almost in a daze, the necessary small talk.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Isn’t it said that memories only grow more beautiful with time?”
― Osamu Dazai, Otogizōshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu