To the me that isn't me

Quote #4:

The thought of dying has never bothered me, but getting hurt, losing blood, becoming crippled and the like—no thanks.

- Dazai Osamu, No Longer Human

Quote #3:

No one realized that I had become insane; when I recovered nobody could tell the difference.

- Dazai Osamu, “Toys” from Dazai Osamu: Selected Stories and Sketches

Quote #2:

Next time life gets you down, curl up in a blanket in your rented room and open a good book.

- Dazai Osamu, The Beggar Student

Quote #1:

Oda wanted to die… . I, above all other men, felt and understood deeply the sadness of Oda. The first time I met him on the Ginza, I thought, “God, what an unhappy man,” and I could scarcely bear the pain. He gave the vivid impression that there was across his path nothing but the wall of death. He wanted to die. But there was nothing I could do. A big-brotherly warning - what hateful hypocrisy. There was nothing to do but watch. The “adults” of the world will probably criticize him smugly, saying he didn’t have enough self-respect. But how dare they think they have the right! Yesterday I found record in Mr. Tatsuno [Yutaka]’s introductory essay on Senancour the following words: “People say it is a sin to flee by throwing life away. However, these same sophists who forbid me death often expose me to the presence of death, force me to proceed toward death. The various innovations they think up increase the opportunities for death around me, their preaching leads me toward death, and the laws they establish present me with death.” You are the ones who killed Oda, aren’t you? His recent sudden death was a poem of his final, sorry resistance. Oda! You did well.

- Dazai’s published eulogy for Odasaku, The Saga of Dazai Osamu: A Critical Study and Translation by Phyllis I. Lyons, pages 49-50.