Kōbō Abe, The Box Man

7 quotes

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"You can only do what you can no matter how you try."

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

"Clinging to one’s outward appearance interferes with living."

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 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

"It’s a real handicap to have a face with shifty eyes."

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