Quotes from Banana Yoshimoto

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?

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.

You have the nicest window, you know? None of the others can even compete. It´s not flashy like the others, or bleary – your window gives of this nice, quiet light.

Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…" (p. 141).

For ten years I had been protected, wrapped up in something like a blanket that had been stitched together from all kinds of different things. But people never notice that warmth until after they've emerged. You don't even notice that you've been inside until it's too late for you ever to go back-- that's how perfect the temperature of that blanket is.

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

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.

No one can survive childhood without being wounded. Everyone remembers at least one time when their parents rejected them, pushed them away, even though they may have still been in the womb, blind, and unable to speak. That's why, as adults, we all look for someone to become our parents again, and for someone to look after us in times of need. And we search for a person to live with who can provide the companionship we so desperately want.

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.

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

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.

I really believe that no matter how old people get, they tend to change in certain ways depending on how people treat them - they change their colors.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions, much of one's life history is etched in the senses. And things of no particular importance, or irreplaceable things, can suddenly resurface in a café one winter night.

Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person's mind.

I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.

Just when one can't take anymore, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that.

It occurred to me that if I were a ghost, this ambiance was what I'd miss most: the ordinary, day-to-day bustle of the living. Ghosts long, I'm sure, for the stupidest, most unremarkable things.

Time expands and contracts. When it expands, it's like pitch: it folds people in its arms and holds them forever in its embrace. It doesn't let us go so easily. Sometimes you go back again to the place you've just come from, stop and close your eyes, and realize that not a second has passed, and time just leaves you there, stranded, in the darkness

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. Still, enveloped in the twilight coming from the west, there she was, watering the plants with her slender, graceful hands, in the midst of a light so sweet it seemed to form a rainbow in the transparent water she poured.

At that moment I had a thrilling sharp intuition. I knew it as if I held it in my hands: In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off into different directions. In that case, we would forever remain just friends.