69 Quotes by Kōbō Abe

I want to spy on all sorts of places, and the box is a portable hole that occurred to me under the circumstances, it being impossible to punch holes throughout the world.

It’s a real handicap to have a face with shifty eyes.

Inspecting? What do you mean? I don't understand. I'm collecting insects. My specialty is sand and insects.What?Collecting insects. Insects. Insects.I catch them like this!Insects?

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

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

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

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 ....

I was indeed in love with you. Though I was perhaps awkward about it, my love was constant. But the unhappy state of affairs was that I could affirm this love through awkwardness alone. I was like a child who cannot go on his school outing; at this point I could only be jealous of others.

In the final analysis, jealousy itself is something like a pet cat that insists on its rights but does not accept its duties.