No Longer Human

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

I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind—of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.

They say that love flies out the window when poverty comes in the door, but people generally get the sense backwards. It doesn't mean that when a man's money runs out he's shaken off by women. When he runs out of money, he naturally is in the dumps. He's no good for anything. The strength goes out of his laugh, he becomes strangely soured. Finally, in desperation, he shakes off the woman. The proverb means that when a man becomes half-mad, he will shake and shake and shake until he's free of a woman.

Mine has been a life of much shame.

I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.

I was frightened even by God. I could not believe in His love, only in His punishment. Faith. That, I felt, was the act of facing the tribunal of justice with one's head bowed to receive the scourge of God. I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me to believe in the existence of heaven.

I also have the impression that many women have been able, instinctively, to sniff out this loneliness of mine, which I confided to no one, and this in later years was to become one of the causes of my being taken advantage of in so many ways.
Women found in me a man who could keep a love secret.

The smile is nothing more than a puckering of ugly wrinkles.

What, I wondered, did he mean by "society"? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called "society"? I had spent my whole life thinking that society must certainly be something powerful, harsh and severe, but to hear Horiki talk made the words "Don't you mean yourself?"

I thought that I for one would like to make such a prayer:

Oh, vouchsafe unto me a will of ice. Acquaint me with the true natures of "human beings." Is it not a sin for a man to push aside his fellow? Vouchsafe unto me a mask of anger.

Of all the people I had ever known, that miserable Tsuneko really was the only one I loved.