I Hate People Like That. Theyre Quick To Spy Out The Hearts Of Others, And Then They Sit There Grinning

I hate people like that. They’re quick to spy out the hearts of others, and then they sit there grinning to themselves with a knowing look. Abominable filth. They’re laughing at how hard the rest of us try.

Dazai Osamu, A New Hamlet

He tended to come across as arrogant and standoffish, but this was only a forbidding mask to disguise his own vulnerability; he was in fact a fragile and very gentle person.

Dazai Osamu, “On Love and Beauty” from Blue Bamboo and Other Stories

meanwhile

It’s not as if the world will move according to what I love and detest anyway. You see, there’s nothing I can do other than leave their affairs to themselves.

Dazai Osamu, A New Hamlet

Is it anyone’s fault that I who was once innocent as the whitest silk in constellations of stars would fall into this world?

- Yosano Akiko, River of Stars: Selected Poems of Yosano Akiko