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 YOSHIMOTOWhy 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.
More Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
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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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I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.
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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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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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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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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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This is what it means to be loved… when someone wants to touch you, to be tender.
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Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.
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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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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
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Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life.
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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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Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends.
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Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person’s mind.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO