Moshi Moshi Quotes

“but life went on, even at times like this, and it was surprising how easy it was to keep going as though nothing had changed. i found it strange that i could walk down the street and appear normal, just like anyone else. that i could be in complete turmoil inside, and yet my reflection in a shop window could look the same as it ever had.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“I’m talking about the lie that says you have to live a proper life, or else you’ll be ruined. I worked so hard to be respectable, because I was afraid of what would happen.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel

“I just want to rebel completely against everything in society that beat it into me that life would turn out okay if I only did the right things,”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel

“When we start something new, at first it is very muddy, and clouded. But soon, it becomes a clean stream, whose flows conducts itself quietly, through spontaneous movements.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“What a comfort it was, I thought, to hear someone put into words something that you were on the verge of grasping.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel

“If someone had asked me how I'd spent this period in my life, I'd have said I'd done nothing in particular. It had all felt like a dream. But I drew confidence and satisfaction from the fact that I had in fact achieved things, that there had been a through line. Even when I'd felt suffocated and short of breath with nowhere to go, I'd done what I could, and it had all linked up and moved forward, and before I knew it I was coming up for breath somewhere where I was no longer weighed down.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“How brutal life was! How fleshly, and mundane.
I was reeling, from having understood it for the first time.
What was lost would never return.
In its place, I now knew the smell of Chazawa-Dori in the rain.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“I’d assumed that once I’d passed the age of twenty, I’d gained the power to do everything alone. But I’d been wrong about that, and this just brought it home to me, again, that I still had a long way to go.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel

“It takes time to get to know people, let alone to tell whether you like each other, so it really makes me wonder, you know, what you’re supposed to do if they just keep coming through like a revolving door, in one day and out another, and you don’t even have time to figure out who they are?”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel

“That's because you think about everything in words ... You can go around and around the same question all you like, and never find an answer. I know that's how you cope, how you get through time, so I've never thought it was immature, or unhelpful. But there's another way of doing it: to sit with an empty space, and just look at it, without thinking anything, just enduring. Some people can do that.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“One of the things you lost sight of when you lived in the city was the sense of how much power an individual had.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel

“Rituals are more important than we think. Not for the dead, but I think it's the best way to help ourselves accept what happened, and draw a line under it.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“Shintani-kun often brought a book to read while he waited, but he'd close it as soon as his food arrived. I liked that too. As well as the way he always said Itadaki-masu, quietly, before he started eating. Maybe I was already in love.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“Peace and acceptance suddenly fell into my hands. Like a patch of rich soil that had soaked up plenty of sun mounding gently up into an empty space, I felt something akin to an answer settle in me.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“We’d given up thinking about things as though we understood them, or even as though we could, and committed to living our days like a continuous length of thread we were each spinning.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel

“Nothing could take away the sights that my eyes had seen, that my mind remembered, or that I lived in the very cells that made up my body. Take that, time, I thought, and squeezed my hand into a fist.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“At the time, I was still so shrunken into myself I couldn't quite believe what was happening. I'd never dreamed that Mom and I could ever do anything as fun as gorging on an entire cake until our bellies ached. We weren't being hysterical, or depressed. We'd just thought of something nice to do, and done it together. That kind of thing had felt wrong in Meguro, but the new apartment somehow made it possible.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“I started out thinking I'd just have to look the part to get by, and before I knew it the poison had seeped in and changed me inside.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“When we start something new, at first it is very muddy, and clouded. “But soon, it becomes a clear stream, whose flow conducts itself quietly, through spontaneous movements.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel

“I was a firm believer in the idea that coincidences always came along at the right time. I felt there was some kind of reason for the way things happened as they did, like bubbles from my subconscious mind rising to the surface.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“Sul campo di battaglia della memoria giacevano le spoglie di tutto quanto si era piegato a forze invisibili, dei pensieri di ciò che era svanito lasciando soltanto le emozioni dietro di sè. L'avrei attraversato giorno dopo giorno, imprimendo le orme dei miei passi come si offrono fiori.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“I feel that what might seem at first sight to be carelessness and disorder in fact expresses the purest parts of our unconscious.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“Under the freezing starry sky, I felt an understanding make its way deeper into me: the preciousness of me, as an individual, with my own experience which no one else in the world could know the whole of, but which I shared parts of with so many people everywhere whose experiences touched and overlapped with mine, even if I was young and miserable and looked like I had nothing at all.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“We already knew from painful experience that life was about walking forward carrying the weight of it all. Even when we cried and raged until our throats were ragged and bleeding, there was no relief. We just carried on, pretending it didn’t hurt.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel

“I pitied myself for having become used to it, for accepting it as a part of my life. Back then, I hadn't had an inkling of anything like that. I'd assumed that both Mom and Dad would live and look after me forever.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“It takes time to get to know people, let alone to tell whether you like each other, so it really makes me wonder, you know, what you're supposed to do if they just keep coming through like a revolving door, in one day and out another, and you don't even have time to figure out who they are?”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“[I]f I could have used all the time and energy I spent just thinking to generate electricity or something, I’m sure that would have been a lot more useful,” I said.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi

“my own experience which no one else in the world could know the whole of, but which I shared parts of with so many people”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel

“what was beautiful or light had no value”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel

“One scene shows the pianist Fujiko Hemming talking about the town.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi: A Novel