You know, Chihiro, darling- all it takes is one little wrong step and you end up feeling frustrated your whole life, like me.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOAlthough I was raised with love, I was always lonely.
More Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
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The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)” (p. 3).
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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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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.
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As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won’t let my spirit be destroyed.
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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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If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.
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To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was this what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn’t like it, but it made it easier to go on.
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Recognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who’ve been through something traumatic.
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Inching one’s way along a steep cliff in the dark: on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. Just when one can’t take any more, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that
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It occurred to me that if I were a ghost, this ambiance was what I’d miss most: the ordinary, day-to-day bustle of the living. Ghosts long, I’m sure, for the stupidest, most unremarkable things.
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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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Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends.
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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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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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I was happy. I loved the night, I loved t so much it almost hurt. In the night everything seemed possible. I wasn’t sleepy at all.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO