It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOThe night glittered brilliantly then.
More Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
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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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She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn’t know how to handle.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.
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The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.
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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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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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This is what it means to be loved… when someone wants to touch you, to be tender.
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People 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.
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Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.
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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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I had been walking in silence for so long,I had almost forgotten what my own voice sounded like.My knees were tired;my toes were beginning to ache.
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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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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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In 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.
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But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.
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Over and over, we begin again.
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The ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.
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Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated – defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Sill, to cease living is unacceptable.
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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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO