No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOEverything 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.
More Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
-
-
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 -
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?
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by ‘their happiness’ is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That’s not a bad thing.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
This world of ours is piled high with farewells and goodbyes of so many different kinds, like the evening sky renewing itself again and again from one instant to the next-and I didn’t want to forget a single one.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
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
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO -
It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO