Quotes from 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...

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Defeat begins with the fear that one has lost.