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“All I want is for someone to understand me before I die. With death staring me in the face, I finally understand the reason novelists write books: before they die they want somebody, somewhere, to understand them.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Real World

“To tell the truth, when I first came to the city, I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theatre for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the main entrance; I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied.”
― Osamu Dazai

“When you were a kid, people probably told you that you would go to hell if you were bad, right? Well, guess what. There’s no hell. It’s all made up. They made it up. Nothing had any meaning, so they had to make some. The weak can't handle reality. They can't deal with the pain or sadness, let alone the obvious fact that nothing has any meaning.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“I don't consider myself as a bad person, on the whole I consider myself a good person, I'm good to my parents. I treat my girl right… take her out and buy her stuff. And I go to church every Sunday, But I've decided that just once I wanna do a really bad thing. I mean a really seriously bad thing. 'cause, ya know, like, we're put on this earth with free will. We can choose to do this or that. We can choose to be good or bad. But sometimes I think most people are good and not bad only because they're scared they might go to jail or hell or someplace. Some guy once said: "Anything done out of fear has no moral value" Well, I think that's right. I figure the only way you can be truly good is if you've tried been good, and you've tried being bad, and being good feels better.”
― Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke