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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

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Banana Yoshimoto
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: July 24
Essayist
Novelist
Prosaist
Writer
Bunkyo
Yoshimoto Banana
Clear
Followed
Around
Benefit
Change
Pleasant
Muddled
Best
Realized
Ratio
Thing
Benefits
Ratios
Things
Exist
Cheerfulness
Would
Wasn
Unpleasant
World
Sort
Adopt

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Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person's mind.
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When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.
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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.
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I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.
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Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).
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This is what it means to be loved... when someone wants to touch you, to be tender.
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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.
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Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?
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I love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.
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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.
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Even when I try to stir myself up, I just get irritated because I can't make anything come out. And in the middle of the night I lie here thinking about all this. If I don't get back on track somehow, I'm dead, that's the sense I get. There isn't a single strong emotion inside me.
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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.
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In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one's life history is etched in the senses.
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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.
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The ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.
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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.
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I never tell my boyfriend that I'm busy when I'm not. No matter how effective they are, cheap techniques like that just don't agree with me. So it's always okay, it's always all right. In my opinion the surest way to hook a man is to be as open with him as possible.
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Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.
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Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.
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Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends.
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