Imagawa Yoshimoto Quotes

It was all your imagination. And imagination is sometimes worse than reality ... ~ Banana Yoshimoto

Maybe I had been waiting for this. Maybe all I had been hoping for was a bed in which to be able to stop thinking, just for a little while, about what happened before and what would happen in the future. I was too sad to be able to sleep in the same bed with anyone; that would only make the sadness worse. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

If I'd known things would end this way, we could have gone and done all that stuff instead of making excuses about my job, about how your mother couldn't spare the time, ~ Banana Yoshimoto

Maybe I was afraid of seeing anything as absolute. I wanted to keep moving, like a stream, and I wanted to go on watching everything from a distance.
That's how I was. I felt close to people, but I didn't have any friends I could really share my life with, our hearts melting together. Something always failed to communicate. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual despite of it... ~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

That's because you think about everything in words ... You can go around and around the same question all you like, and never find an answer. I know that's how you cope, how you get through time, so I've never thought it was immature, or unhelpful. But there's another way of doing it: to sit with an empty space, and just look at it, without thinking anything, just enduring. Some people can do that. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

Her eyes were those of someone who's just fallen in love, someone who sees nothing but her lover, someone who has no fear of anything. The eyes of someone who believes that every dream will come true, that reality will move if you just give it a push. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

With a cold"
she spoke evenly, lowering her eyes a little
"now is the hardest time. Maybe even harder than dying. But this is probably as bad as it can get. You might come to fear the next time you get a cold; it will be as bad as this, but if you just hold steady, it won't be. For the rest of your life. That's how it works. You could take the negative view and live in fear: Will it happen again? But it won't hurt so much if you just accept it as a part of life." With that she looked up at me, smiling. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

My patients focus every ounce of their energy on getting me to share their feelings, acquainting me with every nuance of their anger and pain. Yet I must remain calm, detached. It's a little like trying to ignore a plate of delicious food when you're really hungry. When it beckons you, there's no problem with enjoying the aroma and appreciating it with your eyes, but at some point you have to separate yourself and realize, like a professional waiter does, that it's not your own. It's my job to ignore those plates heaped with delicious morsels and just carry them where they need to go. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

My fury was lofty, pure, cool. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

When you love someone, you want to know. Even about the things that are hard for them. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

This world of ours is piled high with farewells and goodbyes of so many different kinds, like the evening sky renewing itself again and again from one instant to the next-and I didn't want to forget a single one. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

It helps to fight authority with authority ~ Banana Yoshimoto

If you don't say what you're thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

Things are just things. They can't bring back the dead. it just makes me feel better. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

It was the truth. I felt a yearning love for every instant that passed. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

If you're always angry, always yelling at people, ultimately that just means you depend on them. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

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

But that's only because we have to be that way in order to get on with our lives. Just because people are playing doesn't mean their hearts aren't in it. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

The night glittered brilliantly then. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

For some reason I keep getting connected to men who have something to do with plants. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

I had the feeling that Nakajima was taking one aspect of me - the straightforward, easy-going part that emerged when I was with him, the cheerful surface that I had inherited from my mom - and blowing it all out of proportion. If so, he might feel terribly betrayed when my dark, somber side eventually showed its face. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

The intensity of a person unafraid of death, at the end of his rope. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

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. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

I thought for a moment.
Isn't it strange how we unconsciously search for something that will make us cry, only when we want to, and only when we're not able to? ~ Banana Yoshimoto

But even in that very brief period of time I was made abundantly aware of the extent to which various things inside me had degenerated without my even knowing it. I'd always hated working, and I'd never cared much about the kinds of jobs I took or whether I had one or not or anything like that, and none of that had changed at all, it wasn't that...it was something like guts, the ability to move on to the next thing when I had to... ~ Banana Yoshimoto

in order to grab on to those tiny profits people studiously adopt another perspective, keeping their true opinions to themselves, and no one takes responsibility, everyone just huddles together on some middle ground, and it all gets less and less clear, yet in the end everyone ends up being crammed into a rigid, unyielding framework. I've seen the same story play out over and over again. But ~ Banana Yoshimoto

From the moment we met, I as a butterfly that flew into that space that was his soul, a room where the light had begun to dim. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn't have enough energy to do anything else. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

Looking out at the lake, drinking good tea. That's his only luxury.
And what an enormous luxury that was. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

Listen kiddo, by the time you grow up you'll have collected a whole lot of this 'dirt of life' stuff, right, you won't know where it's coming from but it'll pile up, and clothes and pearls won't look as beautiful to you as they do now -- that's for sure. The problem is that dirt, see? You can't ever settle down in one place, you've got to live like you're always, always staring way off into the distance. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

As well as the way he always said Itadakimasu, quietly, before he started eating. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

At that moment, I was truly without words. I realized that the world didn't exist by virtue of my mind. On the contrary, he and I and everyone else were swept up in a great whirlpool, swirling around constantly and not knowing where we're bound. Our sensations of pleasure and suffering, our thoughts, none of these things can stop the motion. For the first time, I was able to step away from my imagined position in the center of the universe and see myself as part of something larger. This was my revelation, and I now felt
what? Not particularly happy or sad, but just a bit precarious, as if I'd relaxed some muscle that I hadn't needed to use all along. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

Sooner or later people are definitely going to give up if you don't give them back as much as they're giving you. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

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

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

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