Autobiographical Fiction - Blog Posts

...She rambled on, but I have never been able to get interested when women talk about themselves, it may be because women are so inept at telling a story ( That is, because they place the emphasis in the wrong places ) or for some other reason. In any case I have always turned a deaf ear. " " I feel so unhappy " " I am sure that this one phrase whispered to me would arouse my sympathy more than the longest, most painstaking account of a womans life. It amazes and astonishes me that i have never once heard a woman make this simple statement. " "...something like a silent current of misery an inch wide flowed over the surface of her body. When I lay next to her my body was enveloped in her current, which mingled with my own harsher current of gloom like ' a withered leaf settling to rest on the stones at the bottom of a pool ' I had freed myself from fear and uneasiness. "

Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

" It wasn't until I was quite big I saw my first train.  I climbed up and down the station bridge, quite unaware that its function was to permit people to cross from one track to another.  I was convinced that the bridge had been provided to lend an exotic touch and to make the station premises a place of pleasant diversity, like some foreign playground. "

" I remained under this delusion for quite a long time, and for me it was a very refined amusement indeed to climb up and down the bridge.  I thought that it was one of the most elegant services provided by the railways.  When later I discovered the bridge was nothing but a utilitarian device, I lost all interest in it. "