Top Kobo Abe Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Kobo Abe Biography

Kōbō Abe (安部公房, Abe Kōbō), pseudonym of Kimifusa Abe (安部公房, Abe Kimifusa, March 7, 1924 – January 22, 1993), was a Japanese writer, playwright, photographer and inventor. Abe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his modernist sensibilities and his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society.

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Kobo Abe Quotes

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.

Keep, Nothingness, Strong, Suicide, Writing

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

Bark, Dangerous, Dog

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

Accommodate, Mankind, Reached, Too Much

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.

Bottom, Buried, Rocks, Students, Teacher, Teaching

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

Believable, Plausible, Rumor, Seems, Truth

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

Loneliness, Maybe, Silence, Star, Stars, Thinking

Time cannot be spurred on like a horse.

Horse, Like, Spurred, Time

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.

Buyers, Lie, Lying, Pay, Things, Worth

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.

Bricks, Glasses, Handled, Headlines, Home, Knowing

Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?

Shovel, Shovels, Survive

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.

Ahead, Enjoy Life, Mean, Pursuing, Suicide, Waiting

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.

Everything, Fact, Fiction, People, Police

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.

Chance, Law, Numbers, Seemed

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.

Beauty, Death, Flower, Pride, Radiant, Sun

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

Flight, Joy, Punishment, Threat

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

Aimless, Flight, Man, Men, Work

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

Fall, Falls, Forms, Heaven, Moving

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.

Leather, Rain, Shrunk, Thinking, Want, World