Banana Yoshimoto Quotes

“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 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

“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

“People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.”

— 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

“Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.”

— 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

“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

“It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.”

— 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

“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

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

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

“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

“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

“The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.”

— 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

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

— Banana Yoshimoto

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

— 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

“It'll be this kind of deep blue"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

“Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed ... (p. 141).”

— 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“I got up and sprinted into the ocean, chasing my father. I'm in love with the moment when the water switches from being so cold you want to leap up into the air to something that feels just right against your skin.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“I wanted to hold everything in place with my thin little arm and weak spirit. I wanted to do what I could with my unreliable body to try and deal with the many scary things that were going to start happening from now on. I wanted to try.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

Just when one can't take anymore, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that.

— Banana Yoshimoto

“Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?”

— Banana Yoshimoto

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

“Nakajima's past would always be there, so the foundation could crumble at any moment. That's what happens, I realized, when people destroy other people.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“A lover should die after a long lifetime. I lost Hitoshi at the age of twenty, and I suffered from it so much that I felt as if my own life had stopped. The night he died, my soul went away to some other place and I couldn't bring it back. It was impossible to see the world as I had before. My brain ebbed and flowed, unstable, and I passed the days in a relentless state of dull oppression.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“It was all your imagination. And imagination is sometimes worse than reality ...”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“The days I'd passed with my mom before she died were still there, it seemed, seared into the corners of my heart.
The atmosphere of the station brought it all back. I could see myself running to the hospital, glad to be seeing my mother again. You never know you're happy until later. Because physical sensations like smells and exhaustion don't figure into our memories, I guess. Only the good bits bob up into view.
I was always startled by the snatches of memory that I saw as happy, how they came.
This time, it was the feeling I got when I stepped out onto the platform. The sense of what it had been like to be on my way to see my mom, for her still to be alive, if only for the time being, if only for that day. The happiness of that knowledge had come back to life inside me.
And the loneliness of that moment. The helplessness.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“If people I don't care for are attracted to me, I accept it as the wages of beauty.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“I had the feeling that Nakajima was taking one aspect of me - the straightforward, easy-going part that emerged when I was with him, the cheerful surface that I had inherited from my mom - and blowing it all out of proportion. If so, he might feel terribly betrayed when my dark, somber side eventually showed its face.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“I wished my heart would break and get it over with.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“As people we narrowly get by with our lives each day, energy from our soft, delicate actions appearing like cherry blossoms, only once, and once for a short while. Eventually petals fall to the ground.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“Now only the kitchen and I are left. It's just a little nicer than being all alone.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

Akira often gets mad at me because he thinks I'm too nice to strangers, and cold as a fish at home. What can I do? He's right, but that's the way I am. I'm more enthusiastic about people I've just met, whom I barely know at all, than with old friends. Before the awkwardness of a new acquaintance has worn off, I'm ready to offer myself up to that person.

— Banana Yoshimoto

“Things are just things. They can't bring back the dead. it just makes me feel better.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“I was frightened of so many things, in my vanity, that ultimately i couldn't protect myself any other way. Try not to be like that, okay? Be sure to keep your tummy warm, try to relax, both your heart and your body, try not to get flustered.
Live like a flower. You have that right. It's something you can achieve, for sure, in your lifetime. And it's enough.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“He doesn't look like a gangster, but then he's not the office worker type, either ... some kind of entrepreneur maybe, or, - wait, I've got it! He looks like he writes manga! Either that or a chiropractor, I guess.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

“Pensai che la gentilezza disinteressata delle persone, le loro parole spassionate, fossero come un abito di piume. Avvolta da quel tepore, finalmente libera dal peso che mi aveva oppresso fino a quel momento, la mia anima stava fluttuando nell'aria con grande gioia.”

— 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