Selene > Selene's Quotes

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

“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.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“No matter where you are, you're always a bit on your own, always an outsider.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Goodbye Tsugumi

“People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“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 never tell my boyfriend that I'm busy when I'm not. No matter how effective they are, cheap techniques like that just don't agree with me. So it's always okay, it's always all right. In my opinion the surest way to hook a man is to be as open with him as possible.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Asleep

“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.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Goodbye Tsugumi

“It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake

“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.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Asleep

“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...”
― 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 & Hard Luck

“Everything in life has some good in it. And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more--it's sad, but that's the truth.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake

“Your love is different from mine. What I mean is, when you close your eyes, for that moment, the center of the universe comes to reside within you. And you become a small figure within that vastness, which spreads without limit behind you, and continues to expand at tremendous speed, to engulf all of my past, even before I was born, and every word I've ever written, and each view I've seen, and all the constellations, and the darkness of outer space that surrounds the small blue ball that is earth. Then, when you open your eyes, all that disappears.
I anticipate the next time you are troubled and must close your eyes again.
The way we think may be completely different, but you and I are an ancient, archetypal couple, the original man and woman. We are the model for Adam and Eve. For all couples in love, there comes a moment when a man gazes at a woman with the very same kind of realization. It is an infinite helix, the dance of two souls resonating, like the twist of DNA, like the vast universe.


Oddly, at that moment, she looked over at me and smiled. As if in response to what I'd been thinking, she said, "That was beautiful. I'll never forget it.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Lizard

“I love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake

“It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“We've done so much together, wherever I go and whatever I see, I think of you. Newborn babies; the pattern on the plate that you can see under a paper-thin slice of sashimi; fireworks in August. The moon hidden behind the clouds over the ocean at night. When I'm sitting down someplace, inadvertently stepping on someone's toes, and have to apologize. And when someone picks up something I've dropped, and I thank him. When I see an elderly man tottering along,and wonder how much longer he has to live. Dogs and cats peeking out from alleyways. A beautiful view from a tall building. The warm blast of air you feel when you go down into a subway station. The phone ringing in the middle of the night. Even when I have crushes on other men, I always see you in the curve of their eyebrows."

"Yet I must remain calm, detached. It's a little like trying to ignore a plate of delicious food when you're really hungry. When it beckons you, there's no problem with enjoying the aroma and appreciating it with your eyes, but at some point you have to separate yourself and realize, like a professional waiter does, that it's not your own. It's my job to ignore those plates heaped with delicious morsels and just carry them where they need to go.”
― Banana Yoshimoto

“Why is it that everything I eat when I’m with you is so delicious?’ I laughed. ‘Could it be that you’re satisfying hunger and lust at the same time?”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“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.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Asleep

“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!)”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“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.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Asleep

“Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person's mind.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake

“You know, Chihiro, darling- all it takes is one little wrong step and you end up feeling frustrated your whole life, like me.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake

“May the memory of this moment, here, the glowing impression of the two of us facing each other in this warm, bright place drinking lovely hot tea, help save him, even a little bit.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“With Lizard, I felt overwhelmed by the desire to touch her skin, to kiss her, hold her, make love to her,no matter how it happened, I just had to have her, Lizard and no one else. Right then and there. Tears came to my eyes, I wanted her so much.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Lizard

“For some reason I keep getting connected to men who have something to do with plants.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“Quando lo stesso tema si presenta per ben due volte in poco tempo, bisogna prestarvi attenzione.”
― Banana Yoshimoto

“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.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Goodbye Tsugumi

“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