Random Girl

“She gave me the impression of standing completely isolated; an icy storm whipped around her, leaving only dead leaves careening wildly down.”

“What surprised me even more was that the earrings suited her so well. I recalled something Akutagawa Ryūnosuke once wrote about the alluring pallor of the back of a Chinese woman’s ears. My own wife’s ears, seen from the back, were like that. They enhanced the pearls, and were enhanced by them - the effect was quite lovely.”

“Some special effort is necessary. I just can’t figure it out. No matter how hard I try I can’t open up to those people about my painful secret. I agonize alone and I can’t sleep at night.”

“I sacrificed ten years of my life for this one volume of short stories. For ten full years I did not know what is was to eat the invigorating breakfast of the good citizen. Because of this one book I lost my place in the world, was constantly wounded in my self-esteem and buffeted by the cold winds of the world, and I wandered around in a daze. I squandered tens of thousands of yen. I could not lift my head before my eldest brother, knowing the hardships I was causing him. I burnt my tongue, singed my breast, and deliberately harmed my body beyond any possibility of recovery. I tore up and discarded over a hundred stories. Five thousand sheets of manuscript paper. And all that remained, just barely, was this one volume. Nothing else. The manuscript comes to about 600 pages, but the fee is altogether a little over sixty yen. But I believe in it. I believe that ‘Declining Years’ will take on deeper and deeper colors with the passing years, that it will surely penetrate ever more profoundly into your eyes, your heart. I was born only to write this one volume. From today on I am a corpse, through and through. I am merely living out my remaining days.”

“No, I have not the strength to bear this any longer. God, the things they are doing to me! They pour cold water upon my head! They do not heed me, nor see me, nor listen to me. What have I done to them? Why do they torture me? What do they want of poor me? What can I give them? I have nothing. My strength is gone, I cannot endure all this torture. My head is aflame, and everything spins before my eyes. Save me, someone! Take me away. Give me three steeds, steeds as fast as the whirling wind! Seat yourself, driver, ring out, little harness bell, wing your way up, steeds, and rush me out of this world. On and on, so that nothing be seen of it, nothing. Yonder the sky wheels its clouds; a tiny star glitters afar; a forest sweeps by with its dark trees, and the moon comes in its wake; a silvergrey mist swims below; a musical string twangs in the mist; there is the sea on one hand, there is Italy on the other; and now Russian peasant huts can be discerned. Is that my home looming blue in the distance? Is that my mother sitting there at her window? Mother dear, save your poor son! Shed a tear upon his aching head. See, how they torture him. Press the poor orphan to your heart. There is no place for him in the whole wide world! He is a hunted creature. Mother dear, take pity on your sick little child …And by the way, gentlemen, do you know that the Bey of Algiers has a round lump growing right under his nose?”

“A spring night in Asakusa Park held a strange fascination for him. Walking uncertainty, he entered the park, going in the opposite direction from home. It was the wonderful charm of this park that one could walk and walk in it without ever seeing everything. [He] certainly had the feeling that he might chance upon some unthinkable happening in one of its corners. It seemed to him that he would be able to discover something magnificent.”

“I had meant to restrain myself - but I’ve expressed my confused thoughts after all. My theories are so muddled that I myself often cannot understand what I am saying. There are even times when I lie. That’s why I hate explaining my feelings. It seems as if this is all some sort of transparent charade I’m perpetrating, and that idea is a thoroughly humiliating one. I will regret it bitterly afterward, when I get excited I just ‘flog my unwilling tongue,’ as they say, and in a sharp voice blurt out all sorts of inconsistencies, filling my audience not so much with scorn as pity. This seems to be my sorry fate.”

Chuuya: Don't freak out, but we're in the ER and need a ride.

Dazai, walking into Odasaku and Ango’s bedroom in the middle of the night: I had a bad dream.

“Without trust, how can one know what is real and what is not? Indeed, one may see and yet not believe - is this not the same as never seeing? Is not everything, then, no more than an immaterial dream? The recognition of any reality begins with trust. And the source of all trust is love for one’s fellow man.”

“Kajii’s literary texts correspond to Van Gogh’s canvases in the sense that they are as inseparably a part of the world in which they were produced. The pervasive presence of commodities portrayed by Kajii extends even to the stories themselves, which will, if he is lucky, end up for sale on the very bookshelves of the Maruzen that now disturbs him. However, he also shares with Van Gogh the impulse to explore a powerful sensory moment as a means to reach beyond the limitations of daily experience.”

The winter night My heart is grieving Is grieving, without a reason….. My heart is rusting, turning purple.

“Once a friend of mine looked at me seriously and said, You know, if George Bernard Shaw had been born in Japan, he would not have made it as a writer. Equally serious myself, I pondered the extent of literary realism in Japan and then replied - Yes, you’re right. Our approach to writing is quite different here. I was going to mention several more ideas when the friend laughed and said - No, that’s not what I mean. Isn’t Shaw seven feet tall? A writer like that couldn’t manage in Japan. He was quite offhand and took me in utterly. I couldn’t really laugh off his innocent joke, either. Indeed, there was something quite chilling about it. If I had been just a foot taller … ! That was too close for comfort.”