337 Quotes by Banana Yoshimoto

I was kind of tired, I guess, of knowing people are flesh. Flesh and water.

Okay,′ I said, and waving, we parted. The feeling traveled to some infinitely distant place and disappeared.

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.

I should have told her at the time. I could have taken a deep breath, looked away, and forced myself to say it.

In retrospect I realise that fate was a ladder on which, at the time, I could not afford to miss a single rung.

There are no rules here, except that you have to sit properly at the bar when you drink. People can tell me anything they want. Things they wouldn’t usually say, things that wouldn’t be acceptable at work – it doesn’t matter. That’s what this place is for, after all: they come and pay money to buy themselves, their innermost hearts, a bit of freedom.” She.

But even in that very brief period of time I was made abundantly aware of the extent to which various things inside me had degenerated without my even knowing it. I’d always hated working, and I’d never cared much about the kinds of jobs I took or whether I had one or not or anything like that, and none of that had changed at all, it wasn’t that... it was something like guts, the ability to move on to the next thing when I had to...

If you’re not in love with him, you can understand him.

It occurred to me that if I were a ghost, this ambiance was what I’d miss most: the ordinary, day-to-day bustle of the living. Ghosts long, I’m sure, for the stupidest, most unremarkable things.