Avery Rota

“Il senso del possesso che lui osserva nelle altre solitudini gli appare esagerato. In alcuni diventa vera e propria tirchieria, in altri essenzialità, in altri ancora frugalità o nevrosi di ordine, pulizia, attenzione maniacale per la disposizione abituale delle cose e dei sentimenti. Come se la solitudine, quella accettata e rielaborata, avesse costruito, nel cuore dell'individuo, un atlante di percorsi sbarrati, di strade senza uscita, di sensi unici, di dighe, di barriere antisismiche in modo che qualsiasi sentimento o oggetto nuovo abbia un percorso prestabilito, all'interno, per vagare senza arrecare danno.”
― Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Camere separate

“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

“Rarely will you meet anyone so jealous a a teacher. 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. Although he may tell others of his hopes, he doesn't dream of them himself. He thinks of himself as worthless and either falls into masochistic loneliness, or, failing that, ultimately becomes suspicious and pious, forever denouncing the eccentricities of others.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“Only man has turned away from the law of survival of the fittest, taken up the weak and ailing, and guaranteed their right to survival. So heroes perish, but the weak live on. One measure of a civilisation, in fact, is the percentage of misfits in its society. There's even a political scientist (anonymous) who claims that our modern age is an age "of the patient, by the patient, for the patient".”
― Kōbō Abe, Secret Rendezvous