Quotes from K?b? Abe

Defeat begins with the fear that one had lost.

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?

Only a shipwrecked person who has just escaped drowning could understand the psychology of someone who breaks out in laughter just because he is able to breathe

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

Clinging to one's outward appearance interferes with living.

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Defeat begins with the fear that one has lost.

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?

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.

You can only do what you can no matter how you try.

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

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