Japanese writer (1924-1993)
The world is a forest, a woods, full of wild beasts and poisonous insects. You should go only through places where everyone goes, places that are considered absolutely safe.
KOBO ABE
The Ruined Map
Any writer, in whatever form, must first pass through the stage of being a reader. It is unimaginable that someone could become a writer without first being a reader. Only a daydreamer who had fallen into an unhealthy idealism could exoticize a writer in this way. Such misperception is similar to believing that thought is possible without language.
KOBO ABE
The Frontier Within
The night is in no way the work of reason, nor it is deduced from experience. It is experience itself.
KOBO ABE
The Frontier Within
For me, the towns where the two-legged beasts lurk are far more dangerous than the fields where the wolves roam.
KOBO ABE
Beasts Head for Home
Our habitual, daily routines appear merely as common, everyday battles. People strive to protect themselves against the encroachments of others, dropping a Venetian blind over their faces and fastening it tight.
KOBO ABE
The Face of Another
Mankind, which has always been a part of nature, has reached a point where it is too much for nature to accommodate.
KOBO ABE
The Green Stockings
Without the threat of punishment, there is no joy in flight.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
It is unbelievable that there are people who have never once in their lives wanted to be transparent beings, who live in a world where they would be lost if they ever forgot a single one of the many things one has to do: assiduously punching the time clock every day, having personal seals made, ordering calling cards, saving money, measuring collar sizes, collecting autographs, taking out life insurance, registering real estate, writing Christmas cards, pasting photographs on identity papers ... somehow, for a brief moment, I seemed to have dropped off into a doze.
KOBO ABE
The Face of Another
More than iron doors, more than walls, it is the tiny peephole that really makes the prisoner feel locked in.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
The minute you begin to have doubts, the floor under your feet starts to shake.
KOBO ABE
The Green Stockings
In seeing there is love, in being seen there is abhorrence. One grins, trying to bear the pain of being seen. But not just anyone can be someone who only looks. If the one who is looked at looks back, then the person who was looking becomes the one who is looked at.
KOBO ABE
The Box Man
Could having a face be such an important requirement? Was being seen the cost of the right to see?
KOBO ABE
The Face of Another
The smell of poison and death clings to any stranger, and people have become allergic to outsiders without realizing it.
KOBO ABE
The Face of Another
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.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
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.
KOBO ABE
The Box Man
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 for us ahead, and the death that comes pursuing from behind.... Once you are free at least from the death that comes pursuing you, you can relax and enjoy life as you go along.
KOBO ABE
The Green Stockings
Defeat begins with the fear that one has lost.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
The fish you don't catch is always the biggest.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
Animal smell is beyond philosophy.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
Clearly the opposing view that the writer precedes the work carries many dangers. By subordinating the work to the writer, one weakens the work's status as a product of society, overestimates the position of the writer and reinforces the notion that fiction is based on individualism.
KOBO ABE
The Frontier Within