No Longer Human

by Osamu Dazai

Mine has been a life of much shame.

I was born in a village in the Northeast, and it wasn’t until I was quite big that I saw my first train.

I have sometimes thought that I have been burdened with a pack of ten misfortunes, any one of which if borne by my neighbor would be enough to make a murderer of him.

that is precisely what I don’t understand: if my neighbors manage to survive without killing themselves, without going mad, maintaining an interest in political parties, not yielding to despair, resolutely pursuing the fight for existence, can their griefs really be genuine?

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

Whenever I was asked what I wanted my first impulse was to answer “Nothing.” The thought went through my mind that it didn’t make any difference, that nothing was going to make me happy.

is curious, but the cathedrals of melancholy are not necessarily demolished if one can replace the vulgar “What a messy business it is to be fallen for” by the more literary “What uneasiness lies in being loved.”

not even the prospect of spending the rest of my life in prison would bother me: it occurred to me that prison life might actually be pleasanter than groaning away my sleepless nights in a hellish dread of the “realities of life” as led by human beings.

“Why haven’t you a chance?” “Because I disobeyed what my father told me.” “Did you? But everybody says you’re so nice.”

Disqualified as a human being.