Moonlight Shadow Quotes

“A lover should die after a long lifetime. I lost Hitoshi at the age of twenty, and I suffered from it so much that I felt as if my own life had stopped. The night he died, my soul went away to some other place and I couldn't bring it back. It was impossible to see the world as I had before. My brain ebbed and flowed, unstable, and I passed the days in a relentless state of dull oppression.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moonlight Shadow

“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.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moonlight Shadow

“Yet at all costs I had to keep my hands and body and mind moving. Doing that, I hoped, albeit listlessly, would somehow, someday, lead to a breakthrough.

There was no guarantee, but I would try to endure, no matter what, until it came.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moonlight Shadow

“For waving good-bye, I thank you.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moonlight Shadow

“Hitoshi:
I'll never be able to be here again. As the minutes slide by, I move on. The flow of time is something I cannot stop. I haven't a choice. I go.

One caravan has stopped, another starts up. There are people I have yet to meet, others I'll never see again. People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through. Even as we exchange hellos, they seem to grow transparent. I must keep living with the flowing river before my eyes.

I earnestly pray that a trace of my girl-child self will always be with you.

For waving good-bye, I thank you.”
― Giorgio Amitrano, Moonlight Shadow

“Of that day in which everything was just too beautiful in the transparent winter air, what I remember most is the sight, when I turned back to look, of Hitoshi's black jacket melting into the darkness.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moonlight Shadow

“Without a prospect in sight, day after day went by, like losing one's mind bit by bit.

I would repeat to myself, like a prayer: It's all right, it's all right, the day will come when you'll pull out of this.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moonlight Shadow

“In retrospect I realise that fate was a ladder on which, at the time, I could not afford to miss a single rung.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moonlight Shadow

“Hitoshi, do you want to talk to me? I want to talk to you. I want to run to your side, take you in my arms, and rejoice in being together again. But, but -- the tears flowed -- fate has decided that you and I be so clearly divided like this, facing each other across the river, and I don't have a say in it.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moonlight Shadow

“One caravan has stopped, another starts up. There are people I have yet to meet, others I'll never see again. People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moonlight Shadow

“How well I understood the blank look on his face as he peered into that window. He seemed to be feeling nothing at all. But in that very lack of expression, the profundity of what he was doing was transmitted nonetheless.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moonlight Shadow

“We're all brothers and sisters when we're in trouble, aren't we?”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moonlight Shadow