Newly Released Columbine Writings Reveal Killers' Mind-Set

The new documents suggest that Klebold struggled in his classes. Asked to write a paper on Shakespeare's "King Lear," he concluded that the play is "too complicated and too long."

Harris, in turn, filled school and personal writings with historical and literary allusions, with occasional passages written in German. "I just love Hobbes and Nietzsche," he noted in his journal. Writing about his zeal to rebel against school authorities, he compared himself to Caliban, the rebel in Shakespeare's play "The Tempest."

In personal diaries, Harris (who used the nickname "Reb") and Klebold ("Vodka") told of their unhappiness and fury at a student body that treated them as outcasts.

"Different is good," Harris wrote. "I don't want to be like you or anyone." Harris wrote a note asking a girl if she would like to go out with him. "If you don't," he wrote, "I'll understand, I'm used to it."

"I know that i am different," Klebold echoed in his journal. "As I look for love, i feel i can't find it, ever."

In the months before the attack, they plotted against their perceived enemies. "Hate! I'm full of hate and I love it," Harris wrote in his journal. "People's human nature will get them killed, whether by me or Vodka."

On a school calendar, Klebold listed steps to follow in an assault on the high school: "Bombing. use bomb. cover fire. fall back. suicide -- point to head w/ gun."

In the seven years since the Columbine shootings, the suburban community of Littleton has been divided by a debate as to whether police and school authorities could have prevented the massacre.

An investigation by the Colorado attorney general found that police did not act on numerous warnings about the two.