Banana Yoshimoto

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.

all it takes is one little wrong step and you end up feeling frustrated your whole life

If you’re always angry, always yelling at people, ultimately that just means you depend on them

Though we weren’t aware of it, we were all struggling to conceal the murky snarl of emotions that must actually have slept deep inside each one of us.

Life is a performance, I thought

Standing there in the midst of the crowd that evening, I felt this realization swirl dizzily through my body in a dazzling splendor of light, if only for an instant.

After all these years of waiting, we’re finally living the way I’ve always wanted to, and let me tell you, I’m really having a ball.

An image of my mother halting in her tracks when she came to the fish store drifted up into my mind, and I fell silent.

You’ll be moaning that something’s missing even as they lay you out in your coffin.

It occurs to me that perhaps this is what people mean by “nostalgia”: the pain of knowing that this powerful yearning will eventually fade