Top 200 Banana Yoshimoto Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Over and over, we begin again.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

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

— Banana Yoshimoto

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

— Banana Yoshimoto

4. “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

5. “Things look different depending on your perspective. As I see it, fighting to bridge those gaps isn’t what really matters. The most important thing is to know them inside and out, as differences, and to understand why certain people are the way they are.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

6. “But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

7. “People aren’t overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

8. “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

9. “I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn’t up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

10. “For waving good-bye, I thank you.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

11. “Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

12. “Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person’s mind.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

13. “The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

14. “Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

15. “Now only the kitchen and I are left. It’s just a little nicer than being all alone.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

16. “The ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

17. “Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

18. “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

19. “When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

20. “Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by ‘their happiness’ is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That’s not a bad thing.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

21. “I see two lovers looking over the edge of the cauldron of hell. Are they contemplating a double suicide? This means their love will end in hell.′ I couldn’t stop laughing.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

22. “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

23. “If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

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

— Banana Yoshimoto

25. “Why were we so far apart, even when we were together? It was a nice loneliness, like the sensation of washing your face in cold water.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

26. “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

27. “I saw the sky and sea and sand and the flickering flames of the bonfire through my tears. All at once, it rushed into my head with tremendous speed, and made me feel dizzy. It was beautiful. Everything that happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

28. “If a person hasn’t ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

29. “Everyone we love is dying. Still, to cease living is unacceptable.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

30. “I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

31. “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

32. “I 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 Yoshimoto

33. “People look so beautiful when their expressions show that they know they have a future.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

34. “On nights like this when the air is so clear, you end up saying things you ordinarily wouldn’t. Without even noticing what you’re doing, you open up your heart and just start talking to the person next to you – you talk as if you have no audience but the glittering stars, far overhead.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

35. “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

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

— Banana Yoshimoto

37. “Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

38. “No matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

39. “Inching one’s way along a steep cliff in the dark: on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. Just when one can’t take any more, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

40. “Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

41. “To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was this what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn’t like it, but it made it easier to go on.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

42. “Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?”

— Banana Yoshimoto

43. “She 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 Yoshimoto

44. “There are many, many difficult times, god knows. If a person wants to stand on her own two feet, I recommend undertaking the care and feeding of something. It could be children, or it could be house plants, you know? By doing that you come to understand your own limitations. That’s where it starts.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

45. “People aren’t overcome by situations or outside forces; defeat invades from within, I thought. I had lost my last ounce of strength. Before my eyes something was coming to an end, something I didn’t want to end, but for which I lacked the energy to suffer, much less fight. There was only a leaden hopelessness in me.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

46. “In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one’s life history is etched in the senses.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

47. “Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated – defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Sill, to cease living is unacceptable.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

48. “In this world there is no place for sadness. No place; not one.”

— Banana Yoshimoto

49. “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

50. “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 Yoshimoto