It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOShe 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.
More Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
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I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn’t up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.
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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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People aren’t overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.
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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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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
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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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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.
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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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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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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 felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.
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Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?
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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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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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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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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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In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one’s life history is etched in the senses.
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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.
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When someone tells you something big, it’s like you’re taking money from them, and there’s no way it will ever go back to being the way it was. You have to take responsibility for listening.
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It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.
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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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No matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.
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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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The night glittered brilliantly then.
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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