The Setting Sun

by Osamu Dazai

Even such uncivilized actions seem not only charming but strangely erotic when Mother performs them. The real things are apt to be deviant.

For the first time in my life I realized what a horrible, miserable, salvationless hell it is to be without money.

Even as I write these words the thought strikes me that, just as she said, we have already died, only to come back to life as different people.

Learning is another name for vanity. It is the effort of human beings not to be human beings.