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I love feeling the rhythm of other people’s lives. It’s like traveling.

Banana Yoshimoto

You know, Chihiro, darling- all it takes is one little wrong step and you end up feeling frustrated your whole life, like me.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Feelings Frustrated Littles
Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Disappear Failing Someday
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Beautiful Crazy Flames
People aren’t overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Defeat Overcoming People
it’ll be this kind of deep blue”she said. “The kind of color that somehow sucks your eyes and your ears and all your words -the color of a completely closed-in night
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Blue Eye Night
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

Adults Despair Mean
Here in this ocean, in the midst of all this water, with the red flags on those distant buoys flapping in the sea breeze, I find myself unable to treat our house in Tokyo as anything but a dream.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Breeze Dream Ocean Sea
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

Levels Limits Real
This is what it means to be loved… when someone wants to touch you, to be tender.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Mean Someone Tender Want
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

Heart Night Stars
It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Miracle Natural World
The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Beautiful Heart Sky
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Emotion Flow Much Night Sense Winter
Fate is a ladder on which you cannot afford to miss a single rung. To skip out on even one step would mean you’ll never make it to the top.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Fate Mean Missing
Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Beautiful Crazy Enough
Why were we so far apart, even when we were together? It was a nice loneliness, like the sensation of washing your face in cold water.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Loneliness Nice Water
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

Hurt Night Sleepy
If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Lying Needs Thinking
No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Alive Matter Want
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

Bridges Differences Fighting
That’s the advantage of insomnia. People who go to be early always complain that the night is too short, but for those of us who stay up all night, it can feel as long as a lifetime. You get a lot done
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Good Insomnia Long Night
Love is the kind of thing that’s already happening by the time you notice it, that’s how it works, and no matter how old you get, that doesn’t change. Except that you can break it up into two entirely distinct types — love where there’s an end in sight and love where there isn’t.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Happen Love Sight Two Work
Her eyes were those of someone who’s just fallen in love, someone who sees nothing but her lover, someone who has no fear of anything. The eyes of someone who believes that every dream will come true, that reality will move if you just give it a push.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Believe Dream Fear
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

Days Long Missing Ordinary
Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Back Happy Life Memories Shining
Over and over, we begin again.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Bare Over Tree
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

Depression Lying Strong

I love feeling the rhythm of other people’s lives. It’s like traveling.

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I love feeling the rhythm of other people’s lives. It’s like traveling.

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Popular Authors

More Banana Yoshimoto Quotes