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

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

~ 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

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

~ Banana Yoshimoto

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 Yoshimoto

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

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

...there's nothing wrong with being a little hopeful. Who says you can't warm your frozen limbs in the faint heat of a flicker of hope?

~ 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

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

Living like that utterly convinced me of the extreme limitations of language. I was just a child then, so I had 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

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

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

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

Just being with Nakajima made me feel as if we were detached from history, and had no particular age.

~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

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

And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more ...

~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

~ Banana Yoshimoto

I was kind of tired, I guess, of knowing people are flesh. Flesh and water.

~ 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

But if a person hasn't ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is. I'm grateful for it.

~ 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

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

If a person hasn't ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is.

~ 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

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

When people start getting depressed there’s just no end to it—things just seem to get worse and worse.

~ Banana Yoshimoto

I felt sure of this. However much I loved him, and as beautiful as the world was, none of it was powerful enough to take the weight off his heart, that heaviness that dragged him down, into the beyond, making him yearn to be at peace.

~ 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 ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.

~ Banana Yoshimoto

Whenever you get something in this world, you lose something too — that's just the way things work.

~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

~ Banana Yoshimoto

In this world there is no place for sadness. No place, not one.

~ 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

My loneliness was an important part of my own little universe, not some pathological disease that needs to be gotten [sic] rid of.

~ Banana Yoshimoto

We've been very lonely, but we had it easy. Because death is so heavy - we, too young to know about it, couldn't handle it. After this you and I may end up seeing nothing but suffering, difficulty and ugliness, but if only you'll agree to it, I want for us to go on to more difficult places, happier places, what ever comes, together. I want you to make the decision after you're completely better, so take your time thinking about it. In the mean time, though, don't disappear on me.

~ Banana Yoshimoto

A particular variety of loneliness, like peering deep into the darkness. It's only natural, when two separate universes touch.

~ Banana Yoshimoto

I had the impression that her place was near mine, but even by bus it took about twenty minutes. She lived alone in an apartment house, square and white like a block of tofu, on the edge of town.

~ Banana Yoshimoto