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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTONo matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.
More Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
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I love feeling the rhythm of other people’s lives. It’s like traveling.
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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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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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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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I saw the sky and sea and sand and the flickering flames of the bonfire through my tears. All at once, it rushed into my head with tremendous speed, and made me feel dizzy. It was beautiful. Everything that happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.
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Every time I look into his eyes I just want to take the ice cream or whatever I’ve got in my hand and rub it into his face. That’s how much I like him.
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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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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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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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Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).
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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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The night glittered brilliantly then.
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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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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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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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO