Quotes by Banana Yoshimoto

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 have 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 see two lovers looking over the edge of the cauldron of hell. Are they contemplating a double suicide? This means their love will end in hell. I couldnt stop laughing.

Once youve recognized your own limits, youve raised yourself to a higher level of being, since youre closer to the real you...

My fury was lofty, pure, cool. It was an emotion that none of these people, struggling so hard to impose a shape on life when life has no shape, could begin to understand.

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

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.

We all believe we can choose our own path from among the many alternatives. But perhaps it’s more accurate to say that we make the choice unconsciously. I think I did – but now I knew it because now I was able to put it into words. But I don’t mean this in the fatalistic sense; we’re constantly making choices. With the breaths we take every day, with the expression in our eyes, with the daily actions we do over and over, we decide as though by instinct. And so some of us will inevitably find ourselves rolling around in a puddle on some roof in a strange place with a takeout katsudon in the middle of winter, looking up at the night sky, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I was frightened of so many things, in my vanity, that ultimately i couldnt 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. Its something you can achieve, for sure, in your lifetime. And its enough.

Things that dont matter at all to one person can hurt another so deeply it seems as bad as dying.

I cant imagine a life without a story.

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!)

I didnt care whether I had gotten dressed, or what state my hair was in or anything– it didnt matter. I felt close to him, and Id come to regard him as just another part of the scenery.

Nakajimas presence didnt put any pressure on me, either. Quite the opposite: there was a warmth in the core of my chest when he was around.

It was only after my head started reeling and my body started weaving and I tumbled into bed that Id hear that soothing voice singing...The reverbations of that voice wandered sweetly, softly, working like a massage on the area of my heart that was the most tightly clenched, helping those knots to loosen. It was like the rush of waves, and like the laughter of people Id met in all kinds of places, people Id become friendly with and then separated from, and like the kind words all those people had said to me, and like the mewing of a cat I had lost, and like the mixture of noises that rang in the background in a place that was dear to me, a place far away, a place that no longer existed, and like the rushing of trees that whisked past my ears as I breathed in a scent of fresh greenery on a trip someplace... the voice was like a combination of all this.

Thats 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

itll 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

The only thing I’d understand right from the very beginning was that our love was supported by loneliness. That neither one of us could haul ourselves up out of the deadly numbness we felt when we lay together, so silent, in darkness so isolating it seemed to shine. This was the edge of night.

Actually, time had always been passing. I had just managed to avoid thinking about it very much. It would be hard for me to recapture that feeling—life wasn’t so easy anymore. Small things pricked my heart. In those early days, I lived in a world of overwhelming sensations; it was like I had just fallen out of love.

I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didnt 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.

Love is love. It doesnt matter what kind it is.