No Longer Human

by Osamu Dazai

Although I had a mortal dread of human beings I seemed quite unable to renounce their society.

I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric. I thought, “As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be all right.

The fear of human beings continued to writhe in my breast

I would like to become his inseparable friend; but if this proved utterly impossible, I had no choice but to pray for his death.

Some nights I saw these imbecile, lunatic prostitutes with the halo of Mary.

I am the sort of person who can forget even the name of the woman with whom he attempted suicide)

One of my tragic flaws is the compulsion to add some sort of embellishment to every situation

the jaundiced intelligence of a man in disgrace,

“Know thy particular fearsomeness, thy knavery, cunning and witchcraft!

From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?

Am I what they call an egoist? Or am I the opposite, a man of excessively weak spirit?