The Woman in the Dunes Quotes

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

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

“One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“There wasn't a single item of importance [in the newspaper]. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of important 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 center of his compass at his own home.”
― Abe Kōbō, The Woman in the Dunes

“Everyone has his own philosophy that doesn't hold good for anybody else.”
― 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

“The fish you don't catch is always the biggest.”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Defeat begins with the fear that one had lost.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“Only a shipwrecked person who has just escaped drowning could understand the psychology of someone who breaks out in laughter just because he is able to breathe”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“Sand, which didn't even have a form of it's own. Yet, not a single thing could stand against this shapeless, destructive power. The very fact that it had no form was doubtless the highest manifestation of its strenght, was it not?”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“-Well, what happens with the River of Hades in the end?
-Not a thing. It's an infernal punishment precisely because nothing happens.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“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.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“The beauty of sand, in other words, belonged to death. it was the beauty of death that ran through the magnificence of its ruins and its great power of destruction”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“And so, one bit one's nails, unable to find contentment in the simple beating of one's heart... one smoked, unable to be satisfied with the rhythm of one's brain...”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“The barrenness of sand, as it is usually pictured, was not caused by simple dryness, but apparently was due to the ceaseless movement that made it inhospitable to all living things. What a difference compared with the dreary way human beings clung together year in year out.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“Work seemed something fundamental for man, something which enabled him to endure the aimless flight of time.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“His expression hardened. It was unpleasant to have feelings that he had been at pains to check aroused to no purpose”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“There are all kinds of life, and sometimes the other side of the hill looks greener. What's hardest for me is not knowing what living like this will ever come to.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“This crazy, blind beating of wings caused by man-made light... this irrational connection between spiders, moths and light. If a law appeared without reason, like this, what would one believe in?”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“Once he had seen a reproduction of an engraving called “Hell of Loneliness” and had thought it curious. In it a man was floating unsteadily in the air, his eyes wide with fright, and the space around him, far from being empty, was so filled with the semi-transparent shadows of dead persons that he could scarcely move. The dead, each with a different expression, were trying to push one another away, talking ceaselessly to the man. What was this “Hell of Loneliness”? he wondered. Perhaps they had misnamed it, he had thought then, but now he could understand it very well. Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion. And so, one bit ones nails, unable to find contentment in the simple beating of ones heart. One smoked, unable to be satisfied with the rhythm of ones brain. One had the shakes, unable to find satisfaction in sex alone.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“انگار هر زن عادی جداً معتقد است که نمی‌تواند مرد را به ارزش خود واقف کند، مگر این‌که خودش را به او عرضه کند، چنان کند که انگار صحنه‌ای از یک داستان عاشقانه است. اما این توهم رقت‌انگیز و معصومانه در حقیقت زن را قربانی یک طرفه‌ی تجاوزی روحی می‌کرد.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“Когда на тебя смотрят, а ты делаешь что-то гадкое — это гадкое в той же степени марает и тех, кто смотрит.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes