Here in this ocean, in the midst of all this water, with the red flags on those distant buoys flapping in the sea breeze, I find myself unable to treat our house in Tokyo as anything but a dream.
Banana YoshimotoWith a cold"--she spoke evenly, lowering her eyes a little--"now is the hardest time. Maybe even harder than dying. But this is probably as bad as it can get. 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." With that she looked up at me, smiling.
Banana YoshimotoLove is the kind of thing that's already happening by the time you notice it, that's how it works, and no matter how old you get, that doesn't change. Except that you can break it up into two entirely distinct types -- love where there's an end in sight and love where there isn't.
Banana YoshimotoShe was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn't know how to handle.
Banana YoshimotoI really believe that no matter how old people get, they tend to change in certain ways depending on how people treat them - they change their colors.
Banana YoshimotoEach 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