Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
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When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.
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People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.
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You know, Chihiro, darling- all it takes is one little wrong step and you end up feeling frustrated your whole life, like me.
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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.
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I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn't have enough energy to do anything else.
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Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.
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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.
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Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).
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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.
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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.
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It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.
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In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one's life history is etched in the senses.
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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.
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If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.
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No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.
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Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.
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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.
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it'll be this kind of deep blue”she said. “The kind of color that somehow sucks your eyes and your ears and all your words —the color of a completely closed-in night
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I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didn't grow up. I had thought about that often since my sister got married. Do you become a character in a story native to that land, or do you, somewhere in your heart, want to return to your homeland.