I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn’t have enough energy to do anything else.
BANANA YOSHIMOTORecognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who’ve been through something traumatic.
More Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
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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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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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Over and over, we begin again.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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Why is it that everything I eat when I’m with you is so delicious?’ I laughed. ‘Could it be that you’re satisfying hunger and lust at the same time?
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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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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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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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Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person’s mind.
BANANA YOSHIMOTO