Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
-
Why were we so far apart, even when we were together? It was a nice loneliness, like the sensation of washing your face in cold water.
-
In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one's life history is etched in the senses.
-
People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.
-
Why is it that everything I eat when I’m with you is so delicious?’ I laughed. ‘Could it be that you’re satisfying hunger and lust at the same time?
-
Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.
-
I love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.
-
Me, when I'm utterly exhausted by it all, when my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody's home, then I despise my own life - my birth, my upbringing, everything.
-
It didn't matter whether he was nearby or far away. His image would drift up into your mind just when you least expected it, shocking you, making your chest pound. Making your heart ache.
-
Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by 'their happiness' is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That's not a bad thing.
-
Of course, it’s true that sometimes the pink at sunrise somehow seems brighter than the pink at sunset, and that when you’re feeling down the the landscape seems darker too - you see things through the filter of your own sensibility. But the things themselves, out there, they don’t change. They existed, and that’s all there is to it.
-
I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn't have enough energy to do anything else.
-
Everything in life has some good in it. And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more--it's sad, but that's the truth.
-
Love is the kind of thing that's already happening by the time you notice it, that's how it works, and no matter how old you get, that doesn't change. Except that you can break it up into two entirely distinct types -- love where there's an end in sight and love where there isn't.
-
For ten years I had been protected, wrapped up in something like a blanket that had been stitched together from all kinds of different things. But people never notice that warmth until after they've emerged. You don't even notice that you've been inside until it's too late for you ever to go back-- that's how perfect the temperature of that blanket is.
-
On nights like this when the air is so clear, you end up saying things you ordinarily wouldn’t. Without even noticing what you’re doing, you open up your heart and just start talking to the person next to you—you talk as if you have no audience but the glittering stars, far overhead.
-
Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).
-
Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated.
-
It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.
-
If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.
-
There are many, many difficult times, god knows. If a person wants to stand on her own two feet, I recommend undertaking the care and feeding of something. It could be children, or it could be house plants, you know? By doing that you come to understand your own limitations. That's where it starts.
-
Even when I try to stir myself up, I just get irritated because I can't make anything come out. And in the middle of the night I lie here thinking about all this. If I don't get back on track somehow, I'm dead, that's the sense I get. There isn't a single strong emotion inside me.
-
Her eyes were those of someone who's just fallen in love, someone who sees nothing but her lover, someone who has no fear of anything. The eyes of someone who believes that every dream will come true, that reality will move if you just give it a push.
-
No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.
-
Time expands and contracts. When it expands, it’s like pitch: it folds people in its arms and holds them forever in its embrace. It doesn’t let us go so easily. Sometimes you go back again to the place you’ve just come from, stop and close your eyes, and realize that not a second has passed, and time just leaves you there, stranded, in the darkness