The Box Man 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

“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

“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.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“Compared to the you in my heart, the I in you is insignificant.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“Clinging to one’s outward appearance interferes with living.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“People listen to news only to feel reassured. Because however great the news of catastrophe they hear, those listening are still perfectly alive. The really big news is the ultimate news announcing the end of the world, I suppose. Of course, everybody wants to hear that. For then one does not need to abandon the world alone. When I think about it, I feel the reason that I was addicted was my eagerness not to miss this ultimate broadcast. But as long as the news goes on, it will never get to the end. Thus news constitutes the announcement that it is still not the end of the world. The following trifling clichés are merely abridgments.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“You can only do what you can no matter how you try.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“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.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“The dial of the clock wears out unevenly;
Most worn
Is the area round eight.
As it is stared at with abrasive glances
unfailingly twice a day,
It is weathered away.
On the other side
The area at two
Is only half as worn,
For closed eyes at night
Pass without stopping.
If there is one who possesses a flat watch evenly worn,
It is he who, failing at the start, is running one lap behind.

Thus the world is always
A lap fast--
The world he thinks he sees
Has not yet begun.
Illusory time,
When the hands stand vertically on the dial;
Without the bell announcing the raising of the curtain,
The play has come to an end.”
― Abe Kōbō, The Box Man

“It was as if, without realizing it, I had been completely disarmed by her legs.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“«Но ведь когда смотрят, будто ножом вырезают твой облик, кажется, что срывают одежду…»”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“The reason men somehow go on living, enduring the gaze of others, is that they bargain on the hallucinations and inexactitude of human eyes.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“It’s a real handicap to have a face with shifty eyes.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“If I were just in trousers, somehow I could go out into the world. It would make no difference whether I was naked from the waist up and my feet bare just as long as I had trousers on. Otherwise if you go walking around the streets without trousers, no matter how new your shoes and how elegant your coat, it’s enough to raise a big hue and cry. Enlightened society is a kind of trouser society.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“It is manifestly pregnant and has a bulging white belly heavy with its load of kittens.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“I had the feeling of being in a construction elevator suspended in the skeleton of an unfinished building and between two concrete walls that were shedding tears like bird droppings.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“When he saw the vista of the street reflected in the mirror in which he was looking, he was terror stricken. He had the impression that the whole view had turned into eyes that reproached him.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“These days only a guerrilla or a box man would want to cover up his identity to the extent of refusing the convenience of instalment buying. But I am that box man. A representative of anti-instalmentism.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

“I see. If that is true, who is writing these notes and where are they writing them?”
― Kōbō Abe, The Box Man