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.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto, Megan Backus (1979). “Three Plays”, p.42, Grove Press
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“I love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto (2011). “The Lake”, p.55, Melville House
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“No matter where you are, you're always a bit on your own, always an outsider.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich (2002). “Goodbye Tsugumi”, p.51, Grove Press
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“Fate is a ladder on which you cannot afford to miss a single rung. To skip out on even one step would mean you'll never make it to the top.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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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 -
“That's the advantage of insomnia. People who go to be early always complain that the night is too short, but for those of us who stay up all night, it can feel as long as a lifetime. You get a lot done”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“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.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“Each one of us continues to carry the heart of each self we've ever been, at every stage along the way, and a chaos of everything good and rotten. And we have to carry this weight all alone, through each day that we live. We try to be as nice as we can to the people we love, but we alone support the weight of ourselves.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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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.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich (2001). “Asleep”, p.8, Grove Press
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“Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto, Megan Backus (1979). “Three Plays”, p.100, Grove Press
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“It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto (2011). “The Lake”, p.131, Melville House
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“Time expands and contracts. When it expands, it’s like pitch: it folds people in its arms and holds them forever in its embrace. It doesn’t let us go so easily. Sometimes you go back again to the place you’ve just come from, stop and close your eyes, and realize that not a second has passed, and time just leaves you there, stranded, in the darkness”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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“Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
-- 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 -
“The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto (2011). “The Lake”, p.81, Melville House
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“it'll be this kind of deep blueâ€she said. “The kind of color that somehow sucks your eyes and your ears and all your words —the color of a completely closed-in night”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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“Over and over, we begin again.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto (1993). “Kitchen”
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“This is what it means to be loved... when someone wants to touch you, to be tender...”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto (2011). “The Lake”, p.8, Melville House
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“Living like that utterly convinced me of the extreme limitations of language. I was just a chlld then,so I have only an intuitive understanding of the degree to which one losses control of words once they are spoken or written. It was then that I first felt a deep curiosity about language, and understood it as a tool that encompasses both a single moment and eternity”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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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.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“We ran into lots of old friends. Friends from elementary school, junior high school, high school. Everyone had matured in their own way, and even as we stood face to face with them they seemed like people from dreams, sudden glimpses through the fences of our tangled memories. We smiled and waved, exchanged a few words, and then walked on in our separate directions.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“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.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich (2002). “Goodbye Tsugumi”, p.109, Grove Press
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“Hitoshi: I'll never be able to be here again. As the minutes slide by, I move on. The flow of time is something I cannot stop. I haven't a choice. I go. One caravan has stopped, another starts up. There are people I've yet to meet, others I'll never see again. People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through. Even as we exchange hellos, they seem to grow transparent. I must keep living with the flowing river before my eyes. I earnestly pray that a trace of my girl-child self will always be with you. For waving good-bye, I thank you.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“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.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“At that moment I had a thrilling sharp intuition. I knew it as if I held it in my hands: In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off into different directions. In that case, we would forever remain just friends.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person's mind.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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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.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto, Megan Backus (1979). “Three Plays”, p.21, Grove Press
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“I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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“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 -
“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.”
-- 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 YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto, Russell F. Wasden (1998). “Amrita”, p.122, Simon and Schuster
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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.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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“Of course, it’s true that sometimes the pink at sunrise somehow seems brighter than the pink at sunset, and that when you’re feeling down the the landscape seems darker too - you see things through the filter of your own sensibility. But the things themselves, out there, they don’t change. They existed, and that’s all there is to it.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“I had been walking in silence for so long,I had almost forgotten what my own voice sounded like.My knees were tired;my toes were beginning to ache.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions, much of one’s life history is etched in the senses. And things of no particular importance, or irreplaceable things, can suddenly resurface in a café one winter night.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“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 Yoshimoto -
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“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 -
“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.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“You know, Chihiro, darling- all it takes is one little wrong step and you end up feeling frustrated your whole life, like me.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“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.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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“It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“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.”
-- 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 -
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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.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn't have enough energy to do anything else.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“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.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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“Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“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.”
-- 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 -
“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 -
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“No one can survive childhood without being wounded. Everyone remembers at least one time when their parents rejected them, pushed them away, even though they may have still been in the womb, blind, and unable to speak. That's why, as adults, we all look for someone to become our parents again, and for someone to look after us in times of need. And we search for a person to live with who can provide the companionship we so desperately want.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“Ultimately, though, it's living people that frighten me the most. It's always seemed to me that nothing could be scarier than a person, because as dreadful places can be, they're still just places; and no matter how awful ghosts might seem, they're just dead people. I always thought that the most terrifying things anyone could ever think up were the things living people came up with.”
-- 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 -
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“There are many, many difficult times, god knows. If a person wants to stand on her own two feet, I recommend undertaking the care and feeding of something. It could be children, or it could be house plants, you know? By doing that you come to understand your own limitations. That's where it starts.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one's life history is etched in the senses.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“For ten years I had been protected, wrapped up in something like a blanket that had been stitched together from all kinds of different things. But people never notice that warmth until after they've emerged. You don't even notice that you've been inside until it's too late for you ever to go back-- that's how perfect the temperature of that blanket is.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to give up; I wanted to give up on living. There was no denying that tomorrow would come, and the day after tomorrow, and so next week, too. I never thought it would be this hard, but I would go on living in the midst of a glomy depression, and that made me feel sick to the depths of my soul. In spite of the tempest raging within me, I walked the night path calmly.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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“In places where a loved one has died, time stops for eternity. If I stand on the very spot, one says to oneself, like a prayer, might I feel the pain he felt? They say that on a visit to an old castle or whatever, the history of the place, the presence of people who walked there many years ago, can be felt in the body. Before, when I heard things like that, I would think, what are they talking about? But i felt I understood it now.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto, Megan Backus (1979). “Three Plays”, p.124, Grove Press
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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”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“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.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“The ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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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.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“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).”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
“Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…†(p. 141).”
-- 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 -
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“The way we think may be completely different, but you and I are an ancient, archetypal couple, the original man and woman. We are the model for Adam and Eve. For all couples in love, there comes a moment when a man gazes at a woman with the very same kind of realization. It is an infinite helix, the dance of two souls resonating, like the twist of DNA, like the vast universe.”
-- 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 -
“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 -
“Chilled-looking people walking along the riverside, the snow beginning, faintly, to pile up on the roofs of cars, the bare trees shaking their heads left and right, dry leaves tossing in the wind. The silver of the metal window sash sparkling coldly. Soon after, I heard sensei call, "Mikage! Are you awake? It's snowing, look! It's snowing!" "I'm coming!" I called out, standing up. I got dressed to begin another day. Over and over, we begin again.”
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
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“With a cold"--she spoke evenly, lowering her eyes a little--"now is the hardest time. Maybe even harder than dying. But this is probably as bad as it can get. You might come to fear the next time you get a cold; it will be as bad as this, but if you just hold steady, it won't be. For the rest of your life. That's how it works. You could take the negative view and live in fear: Will it happen again? But it won't hurt so much if you just accept it as a part of life." With that she looked up at me, smiling.”
-- 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 -
“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 -
“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 -
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“Here in this ocean, in the midst of all this water, with the red flags on those distant buoys flapping in the sea breeze, I find myself unable to treat our house in Tokyo as anything but a dream.”
-- 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 -
“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 -
“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 YoshimotoSource : Jennifer Echols (2012). “Such A Rush”, p.139, Simon and Schuster
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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.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto, Megan Backus (1979). “Three Plays”, p.55, Grove Press
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“The night glittered brilliantly then.”
-- Banana YoshimotoSource : Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich (2001). “Asleep”, p.38, Grove Press
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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.”
-- 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 -
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