In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one’s life history is etched in the senses.
BANANA YOSHIMOTOThe sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.
More Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
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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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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.
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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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You have the nicest window, you know? None of the others can even compete. It´s not flashy like the others, or bleary – your window gives of this nice, quiet light.
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It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.
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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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Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).
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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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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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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.
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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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No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.
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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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Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person’s mind.
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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.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO