Kobo Abe Quotes & Sayings

Why did one have to put up a hue and cry about anything so trifling as the skin on one's face, which, after all, was only a small part of the human capsule? — Kobo Abe

Loneliness - since I was trying to escape it - was hell; and yet for the hermit who seeks it, it is apparently happiness. — Kobo Abe

During the say the traces of summer , reluctant to depart, still set the sand afire, and their bare feet could not stand it for more than five minutes at a time. But when the sun set, the crack-ridden walls of the room let in the cold night damp. — Kobo Abe

The beauty of sand, in other words, belonged to death. it was the beauty of death that ran through the magnificence of its ruins and its great power of destruction — Kobo Abe

According to Fleetfin's research, if you sun-dry the sexual organs of a male and female squid and bring them into contact at the rate of three hundred fifty feet per fifteen seconds or less (the average running speed of a third-year junior high school student), you'll create an explosion surpassing dynamite. — Kobo Abe

Still, the one who best understands the significance of light is not the electrician, not the painter, not the photographer, but the man who lost his sight in adulthood. There must be the wisdom of deficiency in deficiency, just as there is the wisdom of plenty in plenty. — Kobo Abe

There are all kinds of life, and sometimes the other side of the hill looks greener. What's hardest for me is not knowing what living like this will ever come to. — Kobo Abe

Who could imagine that one could be so ridiculed, so humiliated by oneself? — Kobo Abe

If one clung too closely to reality, the result might well be far from realistic. — Kobo Abe

What we call beauty is perhaps the strength of our feeling of resistance to destructibility. Difficulty of reproduction is the yardstick of the degree of beauty. — Kobo Abe

I don't think there is any point in continuing writing. Since I have neither killed nor been killed, there's nothing further to explain. (Box Man, p. 38) — Kobo Abe

[ ... ]love strips the mask from each of us, and we must endeavor for those we love to put the mask on so that it can be taken off again. For if there is no mask to start with, there is no pleasure in removing it, is there? — Kobo Abe

Everyone has his own philosophy that doesn't hold good for anybody else. — Kobo Abe

And so, one bit one's nails, unable to find contentment in the simple beating of one's heart ... one smoked, unable to be satisfied with the rhythm of one's brain ... — Kobo Abe

You can only do what you can no matter how you try. — Kobo Abe

Perhaps the act of writing is necessary when nothing happens. — Kobo Abe

Clinging to one's outward appearance interferes with living. — Kobo Abe

Sand, which didn't even have a form of it's own. Yet, not a single thing could stand against this shapeless, destructive power. The very fact that it had no form was doubtless the highest manifestation of its strenght, was it not? — Kobo Abe

They say the level of civilization is proportionate to the degree of cleanliness of the skin. Assuming that man has a soul, it must, in all likelihood, be housed in the skin. — Kobo Abe

One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life. — Kobo Abe

Basically, there is nothing new in the behavior of monsters, for the monster himself is nothing more than an invention of his victims. — Kobo Abe

It was as if, without realizing it, I had been completely disarmed by her legs. — Kobo Abe

When I look at small things, I think I shall go on living: drops of rain, leather gloves shrunk by being wet ... When I look at something too big, I want to die: the Diet Building, or a map of the world ... — Kobo Abe

It's a dangerous dog that doesn't bark. — Kobo Abe

Time cannot be spurred on like a horse. — Kobo Abe

Mankind, which has always been a part of nature, has reached a point where it is too much for nature to accommodate. — Kobo Abe

Something whose connection with human experience we cannot grasp is bound to be frightening. — Kobo Abe

Without the threat of punishment, there is no joy in flight. — Kobo Abe

When he saw the vista of the street reflected in the mirror in which he was looking, he was terror stricken. He had the impression that the whole view had turned into eyes that reproached him. — Kobo Abe

It would seem that marsupials are poor imitations of full-fledged mammals. Their inadequacy gives them a certain appeal; we're touched by it. — Kobo Abe

Injuries to the body, especially the face, are not treated simply as problems of form. We should rather speak of themas belonging in the province of mental hygiene. Otherwise, who whould willingly devote his efforts to cosmetic work? — Kobo Abe

But for some reason I have not yet become a fish. - The Box Man, p.36 — Kobo Abe

-Well, what happens with the River of Hades in the end?
-Not a thing. It's an infernal punishment precisely because nothing happens. — Kobo Abe

Compared to the you in my heart, the I in you is insignificant. — Kobo Abe

Suddenly a sorrow the color of dawn welled up in him. They might as well lick each other's wounds. But they would lick forever, and the wounds would never heal, and in the end their tongues would be worn away. — Kobo Abe

I want to spy on all sorts of places, and the box is a portable hole that occurred to me under the circumstances, it being impossible to punch holes throughout the world. — Kobo Abe

Now that you are dead, you are splendid. Photographs of people who have just died are worth twenty percent more, and for suicides there is an additional five percent. Now that you are dead you are much in demand. — Kobo Abe

If from the beginning you always believed that a ticket was only one-way, then you wouldn't have to try so vainly to cling to the sand like an oyster to a rock. — Kobo Abe

When will you ever accept the true ugliness of health? — Kobo Abe

Rather than run aimlessly away, it would be best, I suppose, to face the situation squarely and get used to it once and for all. — Kobo Abe

The thorn of death falls from heaven, and its myriad forms leave us no room to move. — Kobo Abe

There are apparently two hypotheses about jealousy: that it is a product of civilization and that it is a basic instinct of animals. — Kobo Abe

Only the happy ones return to contentment. Those who were sad return to despair. — Kobo Abe

Suicide is an escape from life. What is life? An escape from death. This means that each of us must die twice. There is the death waiting us ahead, and the death that comes pursuing us from behind. Your trouble is that you're confused, Once you are free at least from the death that comes pursuing you, you can relax and enjoy life as you go along. — Kobo Abe

The minute you begin to have doubts, the floor under your feet starts to shake. — Kobo Abe

Being free always involves being lonely. — Kobo Abe

The dial of the clock wears out unevenly;
Most worn
Is the area round eight.
As it is stared at with abrasive glances
unfailingly twice a day,
It is weathered away.
On the other side
The area at two
Is only half as worn,
For closed eyes at night
Pass without stopping.
If there is one who possesses a flat watch evenly worn,
It is he who, failing at the start, is running one lap behind.

Thus the world is always
A lap fast--
The world he thinks he sees
Has not yet begun.
Illusory time,
When the hands stand vertically on the dial;
Without the bell announcing the raising of the curtain,
The play has come to an end. — Kobo Abe

How wonderful it would be, frankly, if everybody in the world would suddenly lose his sight or forget the existence of light. Immediately, there would be agreement about form. Everybody would accept the fact that a loaf of bread is a loaf of bread whether triangular or round. The girl a little while ago would have kept her eyes shut and listened to my voice. If she had, perhaps we could have become friendly and I could have taken her to the playground and we could have eaten ice cream together. Just because there was light, she heedlessly thought that a triangular loaf of bread was not bread but a triangle. This thing called light is itself transparent, but it apparently changes into something nontransparent. — Kobo Abe

I rather think the world is like sand. The fundamental nature of sand is very difficult to grasp when you think of it in its stationary state. Sand not only flows, but this very flow is the sand. — Kobo Abe

I personally feel that a box, far from being a dead end, is an entrance to another world. I don't know to where, but an entrance to somewhere, some other world. — Kobo Abe

Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion. — Kobo Abe

The future is forever a projection of the present. — Kobo Abe

Life wouldn't be easier or not easier. Aren't both generalizations logically impossible? Since there's no correlation, there can be no comparison. — Kobo Abe

Inspecting? What do you mean? I don't understand. I'm collecting insects. My specialty is sand and insects.
What?
Collecting insects. Insects. Insects.I catch them like this!
Insects? — Kobo Abe

Nothing is so awkward as a demonstration of humanity by the enemy. — Kobo Abe

There wasn't a single item of importance [in the newspaper]. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of imporant things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the centre of his compass at his own home. — Kobo Abe

I can hardly believe that the face is so important to a man's existence. A man's worth should be gauged by the content of his work; possibly the convolutions of the surface of the brain have something to do with it, but his face certainly does not. If the loss of a face can cause conspicuous change in the scale of evaluation, it may well be owing to a fundamental emptiness of content. — Kobo Abe

Of course, according to one theory a mask is apparently the expression of an extremely metaphysical aspiration to give oneself a kind of transcendental disguise, for the mask is not simply something compensatory. — Kobo Abe

Things have value Because somebody buys them, Because somebody pays money; If you can find a buyer, Even a lie is worth a thousand yen. — Kobo Abe

This crazy, blind beating of wings caused by man-made light ... this irrational connection between spiders, moths and light. If a law appeared without reason, like this, what would one believe in? — Kobo Abe

The whole surface of her body was covered with a coat of fine sand, which hid the details and brought out the feminine lines; she seemed a statue gilded with sand. — Kobo Abe

Far happier he, who, young and full of pride And radiant with the glory of the sun, Leaves earth before his singing time is done. All wounds of Time the graveyard flowers hide, His beauty lives, as fresh as when he died. — Kobo Abe

If there were no risk of a punishment, a getaway would lose the pleasure. — Kobo Abe

Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel? — Kobo Abe

His expression hardened. It was unpleasant to have feelings that he had been at pains to check aroused to no purpose — Kobo Abe

Could having a face be such an important requirement? Was being seen the cost of the right to see? — Kobo Abe

What we mean when we say "terrible conditions" is conditions which we are aware of as being terrible. — Kobo Abe

Perhaps it would be better to say that, rather than losing their passion, they had frozen it by over-idealizing it. — Kobo Abe

Work seemed something fundamental for man, something which enabled him to endure the aimless flight of time. — Kobo Abe

Unable to suspect others, unable to believe in others, one would to live in a suspended state, a state of bankrupt human relations, as if one were looking into a mirror that reflects nothing. — Kobo Abe

Just as trees bear their fruit before winter, just as bamboo grass produces its seeds just before it withers, sex is simply a struggle with death on the human level. — Kobo Abe

If animal history has been a history of evolution, then the history of mankind is one of retrogression. Hooray for monsters! Monsters are the great embodiments of the weak. — Kobo Abe

It is manifestly pregnant and has a bulging white belly heavy with its load of kittens. — Kobo Abe

When I was young, I could bounce back from things like a brand-new rubber ball. — Kobo Abe

So nothing will ever be written down again. Perhaps the act of writing is necessary only when nothing happens. — Kobo Abe

The same sand currents had swallowed up and destroyed flourishing cities and great empires. They called it the "sabulation" of the Roman Empire, if he remembered rightly. — Kobo Abe

Defeat begins with the fear that one has lost. — Kobo Abe

A keener interest in trinkets of self-adornment than in people is a symptom of alienation. — Kobo Abe

The moment a man and a woman decide to get married, both of them should put aside such doubts and concerns. If they can't agree, it is best not to opt for trouble from the very beginning. — Kobo Abe

The world itself, like the mask, began to seem difficult to believe in, and I was stricken with an unutterable sense of loneliness. — Kobo Abe

The barrenness of sand, as it is usually pictured, was not caused by simple dryness, but apparently was due to the ceaseless movement that made it inhospitable to all living things. What a difference compared with the dreary way human beings clung together year in year out. — Kobo Abe

A plausible rumor / Seems a lot more believable / Than the truth itself. — Kobo Abe

Certainly sand was not suitable for life. Yet, was a stationary condition absolutely indispensable for existence? Didn't unpleasant competition arise precisely because one tried to cling to a fixed position? If one were to give up a fixed position and abandon oneself to the movement of the sands, competition would soon stop. Actually, in the deserts flowers bloomed and insects and other animals lived their lives. These creatures were able to escape competition through their great ability to adjust
for example, the man's beetle family.
While he mused on the effect of the flowing sands, he was seized from time to time by hallucinations in which he himself began to move with the flow. — Kobo Abe

Nature with her wealth of birds and flowers, Has in her heart a place for every weed; For her quick eyes require no microscope To note the varied wonders and delights That the Creator's humblest works possess. — Kobo Abe

You can't force yourself into something you can't understand, you know. — Kobo Abe

It's a real handicap to have a face with shifty eyes. — Kobo Abe

No matter how many faces I have, there is no changing the fact that I am me. — Kobo Abe

These days only a guerrilla or a box man would want to cover up his identity to the extent of refusing the convenience of instalment buying. But I am that box man. A representative of anti-instalmentism. — Kobo Abe

Yet there seemed to be some truth in the law of probability, according to which the chance of success is directly proportionate to the number of repetitions. — Kobo Abe

You don't need me. What you really need is a mirror. Because any stranger is for you simply a mirror in which to reflect yourself. I don't ever again want to return to such a desert of mirrors. — Kobo Abe

If I were just in trousers, somehow I could go out into the world. It would make no difference whether I was naked from the waist up and my feet bare just as long as I had trousers on. Otherwise if you go walking around the streets without trousers, no matter how new your shoes and how elegant your coat, it's enough to raise a big hue and cry. Enlightened society is a kind of trouser society. — Kobo Abe

What in heaven's name was the real essence of this beauty? Was it the precision of nature with its physical laws, or was it nature's mercilessness, ceaselessly resisting man's understanding? — Kobo Abe

And again, the dark street. The dark, dark street. The women out shopping for the evening meal of course, and baby carriage and the silver bicycle were already painted out by the darkness; most of the commuters too were already in place in their filing-drawer houses. A half-forsaken chasm of time ... — Kobo Abe

The torment of imprisonment lies in not being able to escape from oneself at any time. — Kobo Abe

Year after year students tumble along like the waters of a river. They flow away, and only the teacher is left behind, like some deeply buried rock at the bottom of the current. — Kobo Abe

He wanted to believe that his own lack of movement had stopped all movement in the world, the way a hibernating frog abolishes winter. — Kobo Abe

The most frightening thing in the world is to discover the abnormal in that which is closest to us. — Kobo Abe

Green makes me think of silence, or maybe it's loneliness. I get the feeling of a terribly distant star. — Kobo Abe

A crowd isn't formed after people gather; people gather after the crowd forms. — Kobo Abe

Some people, when they're called before the police, like nothing better than to spill everything, fact and fiction alike, hoping to create a good impression. — Kobo Abe