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Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?

Banana Yoshimoto

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Banana Yoshimoto
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: July 24
Essayist
Novelist
Prosaist
Writer
Bunkyo
Yoshimoto Banana
Mean
Ambiguities
Ambiguity
Adult
Ugly
Adults
Means
Live

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People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.
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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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Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person's mind.
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Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.
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Every time I look into his eyes I just want to take the ice cream or whatever I've got in my hand and rub it into his face. That's how much I like him.
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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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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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The ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.
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Recognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who've been through something traumatic.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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
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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.
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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.
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Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).
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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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When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.
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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.
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