Quotes by Banana Yoshimoto

But if a person hasnt ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is. Im grateful for it.

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.

It didnt 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.

If a person hasnt ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is.

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.

Even when I try to stir myself up, I just get irritated because I cant make anything come out. And in the middle of the night I lie here thinking about all this. If I dont get back on track somehow, Im dead, thats the sense I get. There isnt a single strong emotion inside me.

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

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.

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 didnt like it, but it made it easier to go on.

The ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.

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

Things are just things. They cant bring back the dead. it just makes me feel better.

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

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.

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

Weve been very lonely, but we had it easy. Because death is so heavy - we, too young to know about it, couldnt handle it. After this you and I may end up seeing nothing but suffering, difficulty and ugliness, but if only youll 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 youre completely better, so take your time thinking about it. In the mean time, though, dont disappear on me.

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

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.

There was a real sense of comfort but at the same time it felt oddly tense. The feeling that every little things we said, these conversations, at any moment, they could stop being possible, and so they were precious, it was that feeling, and the sense of the miracle of this shared moment, here and now. Why were we so far apart, even when we are together? It was anice loneliness, like th sensation of washing your face with cold water.

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 wont let my spirit be destroyed.