Top 30 Otsuichi Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Things that were merciless and cruel always captivated me. The conversations my classmates enjoyed and the warm words I exchanged with my family never really resonated with me. They were just static, like a radio that wasn’t tuned properly.”

— Otsuichi

2. “When I can’t sleep, I always wrap something around my neck and close my eyes and imagine myself being strangled to death. Then I can fall asleep – it feels like sinking deep underwater.”

— Otsuichi

3. “The more one loves, the heavier the meaning of death becomes, and the deeper the sense of loss. Love and death are not different things, they are the front and back of the same thing.”

— Otsuichi

4. “Will you teach me how to smile like that?”

— Otsuichi

5. “Just as a vampire has no choice but to drink human blood, I have no choice but to kill people. My fate was already decided the moment I was born. I wasn’t abused by my parents and scarred mentally. I have no ancestors that were murderers. I was raised in a very ordinary household. But whereas ordinary children play alone with imaginary friends and pets, I spent my time staring at imaginary corpse.”

— Otsuichi

6. “I believe that death means ‘loss’.”

— Otsuichi

7. “There are two kinds of humans: those who kill and those who are killed.”

— Otsuichi

8. “It seemed self-evident that hands were the essence of humanity. That was why there were palm readers; palm readers said the lines on a person’s palms allowed them to determine an individual’s personality. Hands were mirror that reflected the person’s past and future.”

— Otsuichi

9. “There are people who kill, and people who get killed.”

— Otsuichi

10. “The pieces of my sister’s body. I stood there, letting the meaning of those words sink in.”

— Otsuichi

11. “He had drowned the boy underground with his own hands, but his twisted mind still had the nerve to feel grief over the loss. How horrifying.”

— Otsuichi

12. “It’s not that I want to kill people, I just do it to stop them talking.”

— Otsuichi

13. “The name Yoru matches Morino’s black-clothed figure perfectly. Her commitment to the color is so great that I imagine if the darkness of night were given human form, then it might well look like her.”

— Otsuichi

14. “At the moment of death, all connections dying people have with the world around them are severed. Everything that bound them to those they loved, those they cared about, vanishes. They will never again see the sun, feel the wind, sense darkness or silence. Joy, grief, happiness, despair – they lose all connection to those things.”

— Otsuichi

15. “What I saw there was my own death.”

— Otsuichi

16. “We were cruel, reptilian high school kids.”

— Otsuichi

17. “Tobacco kills a lot of people, but cigarette vending machines are killing that woman by stealing her job.”

— Otsuichi

18. “Yuka could not fight that man, but I could become the fangs that would protect her.”

— Otsuichi

19. “The reason I wanted her hands was because she had those beautiful scars, from when she had tried to kill herself.”

— Otsuichi

20. “When you answer them, you try to put meaning in every word. That’s why... their many lies cut you.”

— Otsuichi

21. “I wanted to clap my hands over my ears to stop from hearing his voice. It was like he was climbing into my mind without even taking off his shoes.”

— Otsuichi

22. “My fear was actually the cause of my inability to trust people. Fear of being deceived. Fear of being lied to. My fear of people was stealing from me the freedom of thought.”

— Otsuichi

23. “I couldn’t believe that the conversations my family had or the friendly attitudes of the people I knew were genuine. I was certain there had to be a script somewhere – and once, when I was very young, I searched the house for it. I wanted to read the same words everyone else was saying. But there was no script. The only thing that ever felt real to me was death.”

— Otsuichi

24. “I spent nine years trying not to have any expressions, trying to be my sister. Now I can’t smile, not even if I want to.”

— Otsuichi

25. “The killer had stepped over the line of ordinary life to destroy people physically, trampling their identity and dignity. Like inside a nightmare, we could not look away.”

— Otsuichi

26. “I enjoyed watching people carry out unusual crimes.”

— Otsuichi

27. “I thought about my death. It was not just a matter of stopping. It would be a parting from all there was in this world, even a parting from myself. And this would still be true no matter how much I loved something. This is what made death so terribly sad.”

— Otsuichi

28. “God cannot be drawn or sculpted. The moment it is drawn, it is no longer God; the moment it is sculpted, God becomes a fake. The moment it is expressed, its divinity peels away and recedes from its true nature.”

— Otsuichi

29. “I had the sense that these locked rooms were more than just a place to hold us. I thought they must be something more important, locking up our very lives and souls, isolating us, stripping even the light from us. This was a prison of the soul. This room had taught me a true loneliness of a kind I had never seen or experienced before, and the meaninglessness of a life without a future.”

— Otsuichi

30. “Her lack of outward expression was similar to the way a thermos is never hot on the outside: No matter what was going on inside, it never affected the surface.”

— Otsuichi

31. “You know, the stinky things with four legs that make a lot of noise.”

— Otsuichi

32. “Human beings are liars. I knew that. Which is why I sought the face in death. The face with no forced smile, no performance, no deliberately composed expression.”

— Otsuichi

33. “By understanding the value system the world preferred, remembering and feigning it, I was able to convince others that I was free of problems. I simply had to participate enthusiastically in the boring conversations my classmates were having.”

— Otsuichi

34. “But when emotions get strong, humans have to do something. Some people encase their emotions by playing or exercising, whereas others calm their emotions by breaking things. People in the latter group could let their feelings out just by breaking furniture or the like. But Morino was unable to direct those feelings outward, so she’d directed them at herself.”

— Otsuichi