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 YOSHIMOTOYou know, Chihiro, darling- all it takes is one little wrong step and you end up feeling frustrated your whole life, like me.
More Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
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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.
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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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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.
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Over and over, we begin again.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.
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It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.
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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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Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.
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I never tell my boyfriend that I’m busy when I’m not. No matter how effective they are, cheap techniques like that just don’t agree with me. So it’s always okay, it’s always all right. In my opinion the surest way to hook a man is to be as open with him as possible.
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The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)” (p. 3).
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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.
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I love feeling the rhythm of other people’s lives. It’s like traveling.
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Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.
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As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won’t let my spirit be destroyed.
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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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I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didn’t grow up. I had thought about that often since my sister got married. Do you become a character in a story native to that land, or do you, somewhere in your heart, want to return to your homeland.
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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.
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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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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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No matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO