Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
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Things look different depending on your perspective. As I see it, fighting to bridge those gaps isn't what really matters. The most important thing is to know them inside and out, as differences, and to understand why certain people are the way they are.
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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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Once you've recognized your own limits, you've raised yourself to a higher level of being, since you're closer to the real you.
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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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I should have told her at the time. I could have taken a deep breath, looked away, and forced myself to say it.
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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?
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Over and over, we begin again.
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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
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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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If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.
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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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Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.
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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 spent most of my time thinking, because I didn't have enough energy to do anything else.
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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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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.
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Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.
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What was important wasn't the fireworks, it was that we were together this evening, together in this place, looking up into the sky at the same time.
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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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I really believe that no matter how old people get, they tend to change in certain ways depending on how people treat them - they change their colors.
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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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Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated.