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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
Light
Warms
Great
Descends
Heart
Heavy
People
Despair
Hearts
Shadow
Truly
Around
Emit

More quotes by Banana Yoshimoto

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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.
Banana Yoshimoto
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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.
Banana Yoshimoto
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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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Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.
Banana Yoshimoto
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Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).
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 saw the sky and sea and sand and the flickering flames of the bonfire through my tears. All at once, it rushed into my head with tremendous speed, and made me feel dizzy. It was beautiful. Everything that happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.
Banana Yoshimoto
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The ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.
Banana Yoshimoto
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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
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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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I love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.
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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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?
Banana Yoshimoto
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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.
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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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.
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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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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Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.
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