Quotes By Author: Banana Yoshimoto
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“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual despite of it…”
“I wanted to hold everything in place with my thin little arm and my weak spirit. I wanted to do what I could with my unreliable body to try and deal with all the many scary things that were going to start happening to us from now on. I wanted to try.”
“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.”
“No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.”
“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.”
“Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.”
“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.”
“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.”
“No matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.”