Mary

“Yet, still silent, I sensed that it was not the same white body as when I was little. I couldn't stand it. The body has 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.”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl

“One 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. This may have been a twisted form of my weakness, an idiocy, but the habit it engendered was taken full advantage of by the so-called honest citizens of the world.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“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?”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl

“What was wrong with me these days? Why was I so anxious? I was always apprehensive about something. Just the other day, someone even mentioned to me, "Hey, you're getting to be so mundane.”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl