Banana Yoshimoto
Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Rocks
I love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.Collection: People
The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.Collection: Beautiful
Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life.Collection: Memories
Over and over, we begin again.Collection: Bare Trees
If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.Collection: Lying
Once you've recognized your own limits, you've raised yourself to a higher level of being, since you're closer to the real you.Collection: Real
People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.Collection: People
When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.Collection: Comfort
It’s a marvelous thing, the ocean. For some reason when two people sit together looking out at it, they stop caring whether they talk or stay silent. You never get tired of watching it. And no matter how rough the waves get, you’re never bothered by the noise the water makes by the commotion of the surface - it never seems too loud, or too wild.Collection: Ocean
When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.Collection: Lonely
No matter where you are, you're always a bit on your own, always an outsider.Collection: Travel
The ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.Collection: Body
But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.Collection: Guilt
What was important wasn't the fireworks, it was that we were together this evening, together in this place, looking up into the sky at the same time.Collection: Sky
Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.Collection: Failing
In places where a loved one has died, time stops for eternity. If I stand on the very spot, one says to oneself, like a prayer, might I feel the pain he felt? They say that on a visit to an old castle or whatever, the history of the place, the presence of people who walked there many years ago, can be felt in the body. Before, when I heard things like that, I would think, what are they talking about? But i felt I understood it now.Collection: Prayer
Love is the kind of thing that's already happening by the time you notice it, that's how it works, and no matter how old you get, that doesn't change. Except that you can break it up into two entirely distinct types -- love where there's an end in sight and love where there isn't.Collection: Love
The night glittered brilliantly then.Collection: Night
It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.Collection: Sadness
Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.Collection: Lonely
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.Collection: Heart
On nights like this when the air is so clear, you end up saying things you ordinarily wouldn’t. Without even noticing what you’re doing, you open up your heart and just start talking to the person next to you—you talk as if you have no audience but the glittering stars, far overhead.Collection: Stars
No one can survive childhood without being wounded. Everyone remembers at least one time when their parents rejected them, pushed them away, even though they may have still been in the womb, blind, and unable to speak. That's why, as adults, we all look for someone to become our parents again, and for someone to look after us in times of need. And we search for a person to live with who can provide the companionship we so desperately want.Collection: Childhood
Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.Collection: Beautiful
I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.Collection: Feelings
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 doneCollection: Good Night
You have the nicest window, you know? None of the others can even compete. It´s not flashy like the others, or bleary – your window gives of this nice, quiet light.Collection: Nice
Recognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who've been through something traumatic.Collection: People
Her eyes were those of someone who's just fallen in love, someone who sees nothing but her lover, someone who has no fear of anything. The eyes of someone who believes that every dream will come true, that reality will move if you just give it a push.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Sunset
I really believe that no matter how old people get, they tend to change in certain ways depending on how people treat them - they change their colors.Collection: Believe
People who are going to get along really well know it almost as soon as they meet. You spend a little while talking and everyone starts to feel this conviction, you're all equally sure that you're at the beginning of something good. That's how it is when you meet people you're going to be with for a long time.Collection: Talking
This is what it means to be loved... when someone wants to touch you, to be tender.Collection: Mean
It didn't matter whether he was nearby or far away. His image would drift up into your mind just when you least expected it, shocking you, making your chest pound. Making your heart ache.Collection: Heart
Each one of us continues to carry the heart of each self we've ever been, at every stage along the way, and a chaos of everything good and rotten. And we have to carry this weight all alone, through each day that we live. We try to be as nice as we can to the people we love, but we alone support the weight of ourselves.Collection: Nice
The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)” (p. 3).Collection: Light
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.Collection: Fighting
Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person's mind.Collection: Tea
From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to give up; I wanted to give up on living. There was no denying that tomorrow would come, and the day after tomorrow, and so next week, too. I never thought it would be this hard, but I would go on living in the midst of a glomy depression, and that made me feel sick to the depths of my soul. In spite of the tempest raging within me, I walked the night path calmly.Collection: Giving Up
Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated.Collection: Feet
This world of ours is piled high with farewells and goodbyes of so many different kinds, like the evening sky renewing itself again and again from one instant to the next-and I didn’t want to forget a single one.Collection: Goodbye
We ran into lots of old friends. Friends from elementary school, junior high school, high school. Everyone had matured in their own way, and even as we stood face to face with them they seemed like people from dreams, sudden glimpses through the fences of our tangled memories. We smiled and waved, exchanged a few words, and then walked on in our separate directions.Collection: Dream
Fate is a ladder on which you cannot afford to miss a single rung. To skip out on even one step would mean you'll never make it to the top.Collection: Mean
it'll be this kind of deep blue”she said. “The kind of color that somehow sucks your eyes and your ears and all your words —the color of a completely closed-in nightCollection: Eye
Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).Collection: Bed
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.Collection: Ordinary Days
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 darknessCollection: Eye
It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.Collection: Miracle