In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one’s life history is etched in the senses.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOIn the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one’s life history is etched in the senses.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOYou have the nicest window, you know? None of the others can even compete. It´s not flashy like the others, or bleary – your window gives of this nice, quiet light.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOTo 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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOI 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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOThis is what it means to be loved… when someone wants to touch you, to be tender.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOThe night glittered brilliantly then.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOPeople who are going to get along really well know it almost as soon as they meet. You spend a little while talking and everyone starts to feel this conviction, you’re all equally sure that you’re at the beginning of something good. That’s how it is when you meet people you’re going to be with for a long time.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOIn the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions, much of one’s life history is etched in the senses. And things of no particular importance, or irreplaceable things, can suddenly resurface in a café one winter night.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOInching 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
BANANA YOSHIMOTORecognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who’ve been through something traumatic.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOI spent most of my time thinking, because I didn’t have enough energy to do anything else.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOThe 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).
BANANA YOSHIMOTONo matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.
BANANA YOSHIMOTONo matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOMe, 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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOWas that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?
BANANA YOSHIMOTO