Donald Keene

Osamu Dazai

No Longer Human ... Translated ... by Donald Keene

人間失格

Siri

Bea Sustaita

I wonder if I have actually been happy. People have told me, really more times than I can remember, ever since I was a small boy, how lucky I was, but I have always felt as if I were suffering in hell. It has seemed to me in fact that those who called me lucky were incomparably more fortunate than I. I have sometimes thought that I have been burdened with a pack of ten misfortunes, any one of which if borne by my neighbor would be enough to make a murderer of him.

Eat or die, the saying goes, but to my ears it sounded like just one more unpleasant threat. 

Brittany

I was obsessed with the idea that since I lacked the strength to act in accordance with this truth, I might already have been disqualified from living among human beings. 

Is immaculate trustfulness after all a source of sin?

No Longer Human ... Translated ... by Donald Keene quotes

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