Top 100 Banana Yoshimoto Quotes
#1. Things that don't matter at all to one person can hurt another so deeply it seems as bad as dying.
Banana Yoshimoto
#2. I was kind of tired, I guess, of knowing people are flesh. Flesh and water.
Banana Yoshimoto
#3. There's someone I might be getting closer to, that's all. But it's not quite coming together yet. I think I'm not ready, either," I said. "Have you got ED?" she said. "Um, no, for a number of different reasons," I said, "but it might be something similar.
Banana Yoshimoto
#4. 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
#5. The lake has all sorts of different faces. And so it's always fresh.
Banana Yoshimoto
#6. these people, struggling so hard to impose a shape on a life when life has no shape,
Banana Yoshimoto
#7. I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.
Banana Yoshimoto
#8. Perhaps there are people in this world who love their fountain pens with every fiber of their being - and that's very sad. If you're not in love with him, you can understand him.
Banana Yoshimoto
#9. Okay,' I said, and waving, we parted. The feeling traveled to some infinitely distant place and disappeared.
Banana Yoshimoto
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. I read in some book that if you try to hold people back too much when they're dying it keeps them from being reborn as a Buddha,
Banana Yoshimoto
#13. willingness to give in is rampant in this society of ours.
Banana Yoshimoto
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. I got dressed to begin another day. Over and over, we begin again. (Kitchen, 103)
Banana Yoshimoto
#20. 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
#22. I know just how slimy people can be, and how people like that are during the daytime. They don't get slimy at night because they're drunk, they get slimy because they're already slimy to begin with. I
Banana Yoshimoto
#23. 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
#24. I realized that from now on, my mom's life and mine would have to be completely, unmistakably different. Nothing about us was the same: the times we lived in, the ways we regarded the world, the things we valued.
Banana Yoshimoto
#25. I wanted to strip and dance naked in front of them, because maybe then I could have demolished the fake, slimy atmosphere they had created.
Banana Yoshimoto
#26. 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
#27. People look so beautiful when their expressions show that they know they have a future.
Banana Yoshimoto
#28. I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn't have enough energy to do anything else.
Banana Yoshimoto
#29. beyond that, I couldn't say. There's no point thinking about the future. That
Banana Yoshimoto
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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.
Banana Yoshimoto
#33. Everyone knows that hidden pull is there, but we go on living our lives, pretending we don't. We keep our gazes fixed, day after day, on the things we want to see.
Banana Yoshimoto
#34. 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.
Banana Yoshimoto
#35. She could warm up the air, and then gently blow it out, just like a lily. She smelled of a syrup made of boiled-down despair.
Banana Yoshimoto
#36. Just being with Nakajima made me feel as if we were detached from history, and had no particular age.
Banana Yoshimoto
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one's life history is etched in the senses.
Banana Yoshimoto
#40. 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
#41. People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.
Banana Yoshimoto
#42. I used to think that people are were supposed to be more strange, and dirty, and full of all sorts of emotions, pity and nobility, with infinite layers of complications.
Banana Yoshimoto
#43. As well as the way he always said Itadakimasu, quietly, before he started eating.
Banana Yoshimoto
#44. My body knows not to respond to fake love. I guess maybe that's what it means to have been brought up well. Mom,
Banana Yoshimoto
#45. 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
#46. If someone could give me some sort of evidence that what we're doing is really love, I'd be so tremendously relieved ...
Banana Yoshimoto
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.
Banana Yoshimoto
#50. She walks away as if she were going to disappear. I wonder if I'll ever see her again.
I turned and saw her yellow blouse receding into the distance as she walked along the busy street. She looked like a balloon someone had let loose in the sky. We watched her go.
Banana Yoshimoto
#51. 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
#52. All I wanted was to get through this as quickly as possible, to see the day when memories be just memories.
Banana Yoshimoto
#53. 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 couldn't stop laughing.
Banana Yoshimoto
#54. As long as it had remained a mystery, I could have dealt with it
no matter how enormous a mystery it became. Now that matters had gotten more specific, my imagination began supplying smells and textures.
Banana Yoshimoto
#55. 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
#56. Now only the kitchen and I are left. It's just a little nicer than being all alone.
Banana Yoshimoto
#57. It was all your imagination. And imagination is sometimes worse than reality ...
Banana Yoshimoto
#58. Nakajima's presence didn't put any pressure on me, either. Quite the opposite: there was a warmth in the core of my chest when he was around.
Banana Yoshimoto
#59. It was the truth. I felt a yearning love for every instant that passed.
Banana Yoshimoto
#60. Neither of us realized what was happening. That simply by keeping an eye on each other, without giving it any thought, just by noticing the sound of a certain window sliding open, we were already starting to fall in love.
Banana Yoshimoto
#61. Be sure to keep your tummy war, try to relax, both your heart and your body, try not to get flustered. Live like a flower.
Banana Yoshimoto
#62. 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
#63. You don't necessarily have to want to become an adult; it happens as a matter of course, as you go, making choices. The important thing, I think, is to choose for yourself. Standing
Banana Yoshimoto
#64. This is what it means to be loved ... when someone wants to touch you, to be tender ...
Banana Yoshimoto
#65. I guess my mom was all he had-the one flower that smelled like freedom
Banana Yoshimoto
#67. 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. My
Banana Yoshimoto
#68. And usually, when it's all over, I find that everything has come together surprisingly well. When that happens, I feel like I've been dancing, perfectly in time, with the world. That
Banana Yoshimoto
#69. Most people are constantly perpetrating little acts of violence on others, even when they don't mean to.
Banana Yoshimoto
#70. Everything in my life revolves around people playing at being something.
Banana Yoshimoto
#71. The room was so unearthly quiet, I lost all sense of time being divided into seconds. I felt that I was the only person alive and moving in a world brought to a stop.
Banana Yoshimoto
#72. I became part of the air that surrounded Sui, and breathed her incomprehensible sadness. I think that part of those feelings live within my soul. Burdened by bad karma, and a soul that beckoned such unfortunate fate, Sui used all the resources she had to make her way through love. I witnessed that.
Banana Yoshimoto
#73. It was as if his tears had nowhere to go, they were meant for god alone.
Banana Yoshimoto
#74. want to be overwhelmed, too, while I'm still not too old. I want to be blown away by greatness. Because I've started wanting to become a better person, now, even just a little bit better.
Banana Yoshimoto
#75. Looking out at the lake, drinking good tea. That's his only luxury.
And what an enormous luxury that was.
Banana Yoshimoto
#76. They could smile back and forth without speaking, like soldiers who had fought side by side. The
Banana Yoshimoto
#77. If you
or anyone on this train, for that matter
thought of life as a kind of train, instead of worrying only about your usual destinations, you'd be surprised how far you could go, just with the money you have in your wallet right now.
Banana Yoshimoto
#79. Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed ... (p. 141).
Banana Yoshimoto
#80. 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
#81. In this world there is no place for sadness. No place; not one.
Banana Yoshimoto
#82. 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
#83. 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.
Banana Yoshimoto
#84. Eriko raised me that way," he said, laughing. "If I didn't open the door for her, she'd get mad and refuse to get in the car."
"Even though she was a man!" I said, laughing.
"Right, right, even though she was a man.
Banana Yoshimoto
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. The intensity of a person unafraid of death, at the end of his rope.
Banana Yoshimoto
#88. 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
#89. May the memory of this moment, here, the glowing impression of the two of us facing each other in this warm, bright place drinking lovely hot tea, help save him, even a little bit.
Banana Yoshimoto
#90. 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!)
Banana Yoshimoto
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. in this society, things you'd think could only be bad jokes actually happen all the time.
Banana Yoshimoto
#94. Recognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who've been through something traumatic.
Banana Yoshimoto
#95. 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
#96. I love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.
Banana Yoshimoto
#97. When I'm dead worn out, in a reverie, I often think that when it comes time to die, I want to breathe my last in a kitchen. Whether it's cold and I'm all alone, or somebody's there and it's warm, I'll stare death fearlessly in the eye. If it's a kitchen, I'll think, 'How good.
Banana Yoshimoto
#98. It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.
Banana Yoshimoto
#99. Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?
Banana Yoshimoto
#100. When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.
Banana Yoshimoto
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