Banana Yoshimoto Quotes

62 Sourced Quotes

I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn't have enough energy to do anything else.

Banana Yoshimoto
Things look different depending on your perspective. As I see it, fighting to bridge those gaps isn't what really matters. The most important thing is to know them inside and out, as differences, and to understand why certain people are the way they are.

Banana Yoshimoto
I love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.

Banana Yoshimoto
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
Recognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who've been through something traumatic.

Banana Yoshimoto
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?

Banana Yoshimoto
When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.

Banana Yoshimoto
It's a marvelous thing, the ocean. For some reason when two people sit together looking out at it, they stop caring whether they talk or stay silent. You never get tired of watching it. And no matter how rough the waves get, you're never bothered by the noise the water makes by the commotion of the surface - it never seems too loud, or too wild.

Banana Yoshimoto
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.

Banana Yoshimoto
I should have told her at the time. I could have taken a deep breath, looked away, and forced myself to say it.

Banana Yoshimoto
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.

Banana Yoshimoto
So, have you been enjoying yourself these days, Kazami?' I'm having lots of fun.' It was true. That made the sense of regret even keener, that this time in my life would soon be a thing of the past. I felt as if I could understand a little of what my mother had been through, and the feelings she may have had at different times. I wasn't a child anymore, and this made me feel awfully lonesome, and utterly alone.

Banana Yoshimoto
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.

Banana Yoshimoto
No matter where you are, you're always a bit on your own, always an outsider.

Banana Yoshimoto
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.

Banana Yoshimoto
There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can't bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that. Still, enveloped in the twilight coming from the west, there she was, watering the plants with her slender, graceful hands, in the midst of a light so sweet it seemed to form a rainbow in the transparent water she poured.

Banana Yoshimoto
If you don't say what you're thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.

Banana Yoshimoto
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.

Banana Yoshimoto
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.

Banana Yoshimoto
She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn't know how to handle.

Banana Yoshimoto
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
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
It didn't matter whether he was nearby or far away. His image would drift up into your mind just when you least expected it, shocking you, making your chest pound. Making your heart ache.

Banana Yoshimoto
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
Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person's mind.

Banana Yoshimoto
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
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.

Banana Yoshimoto
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.

Banana Yoshimoto
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.

Banana Yoshimoto
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