Quotes from Kobo Abe

People like me who lack something are liable to become spiteful critics.

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 ....

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

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)

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.

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

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.

Time cannot be spurred on like a horse.

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.

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.

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.

Whatever you say or do, nobody's going to recognize the Kingdom of Quintessential Castoffs as a sovereign nation.

Man's being is the night and the night is man's being.

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

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.

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.

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.

It would seem that marsupials are poor imitations of full-fledged mammals. Their inadequacy gives them a certain appeal.

What contemporary society needs is essentially abstract human relationships, so that even faceless people like me can earn their wages with no interference.

Any writer, in whatever form, must first pass through the stage of being a reader. It is unimaginable that someone could become a writer without first being a reader. Only a daydreamer who had fallen into an unhealthy idealism could exoticize a writer in this way. Such misperception is similar to believing that thought is possible without language.

The world is a forest, a woods, full of wild beasts and poisonous insects. You should go only through places where everyone goes, places that are considered absolutely safe.

Our habitual, daily routines appear merely as common, everyday battles. People strive to protect themselves against the encroachments of others, dropping a Venetian blind over their faces and fastening it tight.

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

For me, the towns where the two-legged beasts lurk are far more dangerous than the fields where the wolves roam.