Kobo Abe quotes:

If animal history has been a history of evolution, then the history of mankind is one of retrogression. Hooray for monsters! Monsters are the great embodiments of the weak.

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.

Perhaps the act of writing is necessary when nothing happens.

The future is forever a projection of the present.

Some people, when they're called before the police, like nothing better than to spill everything, fact and fiction alike, hoping to create a good impression.

Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?

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.

Defeat begins with the fear that one has lost.

Green makes me think of silence, or maybe it's loneliness. I get the feeling of a terribly distant star.

Mankind, which has always been a part of nature, has reached a point where it is too much for nature to accommodate.

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.

While he mused on the effect of the flowing sands, he was seized from time to time by hallucinations in which he himself began to move with the flow.

When will you ever accept the true ugliness of health?

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 ....

A plausible rumor / Seems a lot more believable / Than the truth itself.

A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of imporant things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the centre of his compass at his own home.

Far happier he, who, young and full of pride And radiant with the glory of the sun, Leaves earth before his singing time is done. All wounds of Time the graveyard flowers hide, His beauty lives, as fresh as when he died.

It's a dangerous dog that doesn't bark.

Many people ask why a writer commits suicide. But I think that people who ask don't know the vanity and the nothingness of writing. I think it is very usual and natural for a writer to commit suicide, because in order to keep on writing he must be a very strong person.

Nature with her wealth of birds and flowers, Has in her heart a place for every weed; For her quick eyes require no microscope To note the varied wonders and delights That the Creator's humblest works possess.

Now that you are dead, you are splendid. Photographs of people who have just died are worth twenty percent more, and for suicides there is an additional five percent. Now that you are dead you are much in demand.

Something whose connection with human experience we cannot grasp is bound to be frightening.

The minute you begin to have doubts, the floor under your feet starts to shake.

The most frightening thing in the world is to discover the abnormal in that which is closest to us.

The thorn of death falls from heaven, and its myriad forms leave us no room to move.

Time cannot be spurred on like a horse.

When I was young, I could bounce back from things like a brand-new rubber ball.

Without the threat of punishment, there is no joy in flight.

Work seemed something fundamental for man, something which enabled him to endure the aimless flight of time.

Yet there seemed to be some truth in the law of probability, according to which the chance of success is directly proportionate to the number of repetitions.

Things have value Because somebody buys them, Because somebody pays money; If you can find a buyer, Even a lie is worth a thousand yen.