Kōbō Abe citations

“Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion.”

“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.”

“Being free always involves being lonely.”

“Everyone has his own philosophy that doesn't hold good for anybody else.”

“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.”

“More than iron doors, more than walls, it is the tiny peephole that really makes the prisoner feel locked in.”

“Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?”

“It goes on, terrifyingly repetitive. 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.”

“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.”

“Only the happy ones return to contentment. Those who were sad return to despair.”

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

“Rarely will you meet anyone so jealous as a teacher. 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. Although he may tell others of his hopes, he doesn't dream of them himself. He thinks of himself as worthless and either falls into masochistic loneliness or, failing that, ultimately becomes suspicious and pious, forever denouncing the eccentricities of others. He longs so much for freedom and action that he can only hate people.”

“When a castaway collapses from hunger and thirst it is fear of physical want rather than a real want, they say. Defeat begins with the fear that one has lost.”

“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.”