Bekri Hanene > Bekri's Quotes

“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

“Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion.”
― Kobo Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“The most frightening thing in the world is to discover the abnormal in that which is closest to us.”
― Kobo Abe

“Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.”
― William W. Purkey

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“You don't need me. What you really need is a mirror. Because any stranger is for you simply a mirror in which to reflect yourself. I don't ever again want to return to such a desert of mirrors.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Face of Another

“Being free always involves being lonely.”
― Kōbō Abe

“Everyone has his own philosophy that doesn't hold good for anybody else.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“Still, the one who best understands the significance of light is not the electrician, not the painter, not the photographer, but the man who lost his sight in adulthood. There must be the wisdom of deficiency in deficiency, just as there is the wisdom of plenty in plenty.”
― Kobo Abe, The Face of Another

“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.”
― Kobo Abe

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

“What in heaven's name was the real essence of this beauty? Was it the precision of nature with its physical laws, or was it nature's mercilessness, ceaselessly resisting man's understanding?”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“If there were no risk of a punishment, a getaway would lose the pleasure.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“Only the happy ones return to contentment. Those who were sad return to despair.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“I rather think the world is like sand. The fundamental nature of sand is very difficult to grasp when you think of it in its stationary state. Sand not only flows, but this very flow is the sand.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“If from the beginning you always believed that a ticket was only one-way, then you wouldn't have to try so vainly to cling to the sand like an oyster to a rock.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“I personally feel that a box, far from being a dead end, is an entrance to another world. I don't know to where, but an entrance to somewhere, some other world.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“So nothing will ever be written down again. Perhaps the act of writing is necessary only when nothing happens.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Face of Another

“Certainly sand was not suitable for life. Yet, was a stationary condition absolutely indispensable for existence? Didn't unpleasant competition arise precisely because one tried to cling to a fixed position? If one were to give up a fixed position and abandon oneself to the movement of the sands, competition would soon stop. Actually, in the deserts flowers bloomed and insects and other animals lived their lives. These creatures were able to escape competition through their great ability to adjust--for example, the man's beetle family.

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.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“Animal smell is beyond philosophy.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“People like me who lack something are liable to become spiteful critics.”
― Kobo Abe

“The only way to go beyond work is through work. It is not that work itself is valuable; we surmount work by work. The real value of work lies in the strength of self-denial.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“Could having a face be such an important requirement? Was being seen the cost of the right to see?”
― Kōbō Abe, The Face of Another

“It was perhaps relief and confidence stemming from the opportunity to tempt you into being my accomplice, however indirectly, in the lonely work of producing the mask. For me, whatever you may say, you are the most important "other person." No, I do not mean it in a negative sense. I meant that the one who must first restore the roadway, the one whose name I had to write on the first letter, was first on my list of "others." (Under any circumstances, I simply did not want to lose you. To lose you would be symbolic of losing the world.)”
― Kobo Abe, The Face of Another

“The suffering of being imprisoned rests in the fact that it is impossible, at any time, to escape from oneself.”
― Kōbō Abe

“The fish you don't catch is always the biggest.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“Nothing is so awkward as a demonstration of humanity by the enemy.”
― Kōbō Abe, Secret Rendezvous