Lusine Goroyan's Reviews > The Face of Another

“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

“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

“How wonderful it would be, frankly, if everybody in the world would suddenly lose his sight or forget the existence of light. Immediately, there would be agreement about form. Everybody would accept the fact that a loaf of bread is a loaf of bread whether triangular or round. The girl a little while ago would have kept her eyes shut and listened to my voice. If she had, perhaps we could have become friendly and I could have taken her to the playground and we could have eaten ice cream together. Just because there was light, she heedlessly thought that a triangular loaf of bread was not bread but a triangle. This thing called light is itself transparent, but it apparently changes into something nontransparent.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Face of Another

“I wanted to get close to you, and at the same time to stay away from you. I wanted to know you, and at the same time I resisted that knowing. I wanted to look at you and at the same time felt ashamed to look. My state of suspension was such that the crevice between us grew deeper and deeper, and holding the broken glass together with my two hands, I barely preserved its form.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Face of Another