"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)

"You’re not dead,
but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl, Lia-Lia,
caught in between the worlds. You’re a ghost with a beat-
ing heart. Soon you’ll cross the border and be with me.
I’m so stoked. I miss you wicked."
— Anderson Laurie Halse

"Why? You want to know why?
Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or
three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in
coarse salt, then pull on long underwear woven from spun
glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes,
as long as they are tight. "
— Anderson Laurie Halse

"It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"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.)

"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)

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living"
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)