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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.

Banana Yoshimoto

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Banana Yoshimoto
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: July 24
Essayist
Novelist
Prosaist
Writer
Bunkyo
Yoshimoto Banana
People
Despair
Hearts
Shadow
Truly
Around
Emit
Light
Warms
Great
Descends
Heart
Heavy

More quotes by Banana Yoshimoto

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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
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People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.
Banana Yoshimoto
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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
Banana Yoshimoto
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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.
Banana Yoshimoto
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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.
Banana Yoshimoto
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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
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As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. 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.
Banana Yoshimoto
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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.
Banana Yoshimoto
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I had been walking in silence for so long,I had almost forgotten what my own voice sounded like.My knees were tiredmy toes were beginning to ache.
Banana Yoshimoto
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Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person's mind.
Banana Yoshimoto
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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
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Of course, it’s true that sometimes the pink at sunrise somehow seems brighter than the pink at sunset, and that when you’re feeling down the the landscape seems darker too - you see things through the filter of your own sensibility. But the things themselves, out there, they don’t change. They existed, and that’s all there is to it.
Banana Yoshimoto
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I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.
Banana Yoshimoto
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Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.
Banana Yoshimoto
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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.
Banana Yoshimoto
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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
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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.
Banana Yoshimoto
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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.
Banana Yoshimoto
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Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?
Banana Yoshimoto
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Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).
Banana Yoshimoto