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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
Ugly
Adults
Means
Live
Mean
Ambiguities
Ambiguity
Adult

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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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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.
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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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I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.
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It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.
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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.
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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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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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Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.
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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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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 love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.
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Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person's mind.
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Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).
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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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There are many, many difficult times, god knows. If a person wants to stand on her own two feet, I recommend undertaking the care and feeding of something. It could be children, or it could be house plants, you know? By doing that you come to understand your own limitations. That's where it starts.
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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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Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.
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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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When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.
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