"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."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Goodbye Tsugumi)

"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 (N.P.)

"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

"Ultimately, though, it's living people that frighten me the most. It's always seemed to me that nothing could be scarier than a person, because as dreadful places can be, they're still just places; and no matter how awful ghosts might seem, they're just dead people. I always thought that the most terrifying things anyone could ever think up were the things living people came up with. "
— Banana Yoshimoto (Hardboiled and Hard Luck)

"Life is a performance, I thought. Perthaps the word "illusion" would have meant more or less the same thing, but to me "performance" seemed closed to the truth. Standing there in the midst of the crowd that evening, I felt this realization swirl dizzily through my body in a dazzling splendor of light, if only for an instant. 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."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Goodbye Tsugumi)

"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 (Kitchen)

"Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy."
— Banana Yoshimoto (NP)

"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."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Goodbye Tsugumi)

"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."
— Banana Yoshimoto

"From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to give p; 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 o 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."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Kitchen)

"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."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Goodbye Tsugumi)

"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."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Goodbye Tsugumi)

""With a cold"--she spoke evenly, lowering her eyes a little--"now is the hardest time. Maybe even harder than dying. But this is probably as bad as it can get. You might come to fear the next time you get a cold; it will be as bad as this, but if you just hold steady, it won't be. For the rest of your life. That's how it works. You could take the negative view and live in fear: Will it happen again? But it won't hurt so much if you just accept it as a part of life." With that she looked up at me, smiling."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Kitchen)

"Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Kitchen)

"In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one's life history is etched in the senses."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Kitchen)

"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."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Kitchen)

"Chilled-looking people walking along the riverside, the snow beginning, faintly, to pile up on the roofs of cars, the bare trees shaking their heads left and right, dry leaves tossing in the wind. The silver of the metal window sash sparkling coldly.
Soon after, I heard sensei call, "Mikage! Are you awake? It's snowing, look! It's snowing!"
"I'm coming!" I called out, standing up. I got dressed to begin another day. Over and over, we begin again."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Kitchen)

"It was only after my head started reeling and my body started weaving and I tumbled into bed that I'd hear that soothing voice singing...The reverbations of that voice wandered sweetly, softly, working like a massage on the area of my heart that was the most tightly clenched, helping those knots to loosen. It was like the rush of waves, and like the laughter of people I'd met in all kinds of places, people I'd become friendly with and then separated from, and like the kind words all those people had said to me, and like the mewing of a cat I had lost, and like the mixture of noises that rang in the background in a place that was dear to me, a place far away, a place that no longer existed, and like the rushing of trees that whisked past my ears as I breathed in a scent of fresh greenery on a trip someplace... the voice was like a combination of all this."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Asleep)

"Inching one's way along a steep cliff in the dark: on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. Just when one can't take any more, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that"
— Banana Yoshimoto (Kitchen)

"Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy."
— Banana Yoshimoto (N.P.)

"For ten years I had been protected, wrapped up in something like a blanket that had been stitched together from all kinds of different things. But people never notice that warmth until after they've emerged. You don't even notice that you've been inside until it's too late for you ever to go back-- that's how perfect the temperature of that blanket is."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Goodbye Tsugumi)

"People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Kitchen)

"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."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Kitchen)

"In tutte le coppie che si amano c'è sempre nella donna una caratteristica unica come la sua, su cui per un attimo lo sguardo dell'uomo si fissa con intensità. Una spirale infinita dove uno si rispecchia nell'altro."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Lizard)

"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."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Goodbye Tsugumi)

""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.""
— Banana Yoshimoto

"'So, have you been enjoying yourself these days, Kazami?'
'I'm having lots of fun.'
It was true. That made the sense of regret even keener, that this time in my life would soon be a thing of the past. I felt as if I could understand a little of what my mother had been through, and the feelings she may have had at different times. I wasn't a child anymore, and this made me feel awfully lonesome, and utterly alone.
"
— Banana Yoshimoto (N.P.)

"Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down."
— Banana Yoshimoto

"There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can’t bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that. Still, enveloped in the twilight coming from the west, there she was, watering the plants with her slender, graceful hands, in the midst of a light so sweet it seemed to form a rainbow in the transparent water she poured."
— Banana Yoshimoto

"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 (Kitchen)

"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 (Kitchen)

""weren't we all the same as children?" eiko asked. "all of us, destined to become beautiful brides in fluffy white dresses!" she giggled to herself. "where did we go wrong?"

"isn't that what keeps life interesting?" i replied. "and who knows? next year you could be somebody's wife. no one knows what will happen."

"sometimes i think it would be wonderful just to stay the way i am forever, just kick back and space out during the afternoon thinking about all the exciting things that the night will bring, all the naughty things i might take part in." she snickered again.

"well," i said, "aren't you the happy one."

she squinted her tiny nose and laughed.

dawn was breaking as we said good-bye. i saw her off by watching her small body disappear into the background, her high heels clapping along, echoing in the early morning city.

my drunkenness, the sunrise, the bright sky, and a friend who was leaving.

if i had died in my fall i would have missed that morning - that splendid sunrise over tokyo. "
— Banana Yoshimoto

"Anche in mezzo a una folla,
gli spiriti affini riescono a comunicare.
Si riconoscono tra la folla per qualcosa di familiare,di intimo, che ognuno dei due ritrova nell'altro."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Lizard)

"Here in this ocean, in the midst of all this water, with the red flags on those distant buoys flapping in the sea breeze, I find myself unable to treat our house in Tokyo as anything but a dream. "
— Banana Yoshimoto (Goodbye Tsugumi)

"Begitulah, tapi kalau manusia sama sekali tidak pernah merasa putus asa, kita tidak akan tahu bagian mana dari diri kita yang tidak sanggup kita singkirkan. Lalu kita akan tumbuh dewasa tanpa benar-benar mengerti apa saja yang bisa membuat kita gembira. Aku bahagia karena bisa menderita"
— Banana Yoshimoto (Kitchen)

"I should have told her at the time. I could have taken a deep breath, looked away, and forced myself to say it."
— Banana Yoshimoto (Amrita)

"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 (Kitchen)