black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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

Disappear Failing Someday
I love feeling the rhythm of other people’s lives. It’s like traveling.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Feelings Love People Rhythm Travel
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
But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Guilt Twist Uncertain
I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn’t have enough energy to do anything else.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Culture Energy Thinking
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
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
Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person’s mind.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Enough Mind Tea
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
It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Felt Gorgeous Sadness
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
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Benefits Ratio World
Recognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who’ve been through something traumatic.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Ignorant People Way
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Eye Hand Ice Cream
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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Home Lonely Skins
I held the feeling in my heart; the urge to discuss it died out. There was all the time in the world. In the endless repetition of other nights, other mornings, this moment, too, might become a dream.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Dream Heart Morning

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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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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Popular Authors

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