Quotes from K?b? Abe

isn't the mask something required mainly by the victim and the disguise, on the contrary, by the assailant?

The expression is not some hidden door, unlikely to be seen; it is like a front door, constructed and decorated to be the first thing to greet the visitor's eyes.

For me, whatever you may say, you are the most important "other person." No, I do not mean it in a negative sense. I mean that the one who must first restore the roadway, the one whose name I had to write on the first letter, was first on my list of "others." (Under any circumstances, I simply did not want to lose you. To lose you would be symbolic of losing the world.)

my hopes changed into a heap of shapeless rags, like seaweed pulled out of the water.

For it is not true that one has the right to be loved by the person one loves, as the poets say.

You had not abandoned me, but neither did you stay close to me.

The icy lump of silence that lay between us was apparently too deeply frozen to melt under just any pretext. The questions I had prepared as I walked along—possible opportunities for conversation—were so many matches held against an iceberg.

you moved about ceaselessly from one activity to another with that strangely light expression that comes just before smiling. Perhaps you were unaware of it, but it was indeed a curious expression. I believe I proposed marriage to you precisely because I was unexpectedly taken by that look.

An affair with you, of course, was the shameless fantasy of the mask. Even though I wanted to feel something, hope for something, attempt something, the poison of jealousy (I had deliberately begun to forget it, though it was the root of all these fancies) recovered its breath and began to check the flow of blood in my veins.

it's probably a good thing to go to the movies occasionally. The whole audience puts on the actor's face. No one needs his own. A movie's a place where you pay your money to exchange faces for a while.

while I pretended to submit reluctantly to the forceful persuasions of the mask, I was covering up to myself the fact that the mask's wish was my own.

what they sold in the bar was the fake mask of alcohol.

I began to toy with the finger of a girl in navy blue seated next to me. No, it was not I, but the mask.

Should I make this girl just for this once, tonight, in revenge for the scars, for you, and for my real face?

Surely the mask and tattooing have a surprising element in common: they both seek to bring about a transformation by obliterating the real skin. But of course, there were points of difference too. Fundamentally the mask was something removable, but tattooing was assimilated and incorporated into the skin. The mask, moreover, furnished an evasion of reality, but tattooing, of course, was an effort to make oneself obvious and showy.

I had never thought that your class would be so useful. Going to such a useless thing, faithfully, year in year out, was, I thought, good proof of woman's unpredictability.

Being a clown would be all right, but I did not want to be a clown unaware that he was one.

Como una bestia acosada que echa huir hacia una cueva, me abrí paso entre aquella selva humana y me refugié desesperadamente, a todo correr, en un cine cercano. Pues, para un monstruo, ese mercado de oscuridad era el único lugar seguro

If you did not want to, you should say a simple "no"; but by hesitating you implied that your consent was already half given.

The expression is something like an equation by which we show our relationship with others. It's a roadway between oneself and others. If it's blocked by a landslide, even those who have been at pains to travel it will think you are now some uninhabited, dilapidated house and perhaps pass by.

But when I heard your response, while I applauded in my heart that things had gone well, I wondered why I had the painful feeling that I had been betrayed. It was all right since it was I, but what if it had been some complete stranger? Once you had hesitated, you acquiesced.

you yourself were split into several parts. Just as I had a double existence, you did too. If I was another person wearing a stranger's mask, you were another person wearing the mask of yourself. Another wearing the mask of himself … a gruesome combination.…

my betrayed love had been drawn into a corner and changed to hate, my desire to reestablish the roadway had been frustrated and turned into a desire for revenge.

I was a cuckold present at his wife's adultery. This was a triangular relationship with one actor playing two parts. If one were to make a drawing of "me," "the mask, that is, the other me," and "you," it would be a non-Euclidean triangular relationship, existing on a single straight line.