{"author":"Banana Yoshimoto","author_id":"Banana+Yoshimoto","total_quotes":68,"quotes":[{"text":"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.","author":"Banana Yoshimoto","tags":["day-to-day","ghosts","ordinary","unremarkable"],"id":7871,"author_id":"Banana+Yoshimoto"},{"text":"Nakajima's presence didn't put any pressure on me, either. Quite the opposite: there was a warmth in the core of my chest when he was around.","author":"Banana Yoshimoto","tags":["home","love"],"id":10888,"author_id":"Banana+Yoshimoto"},{"text":"Actually, time had always been passing. I had just managed to avoid thinking about it very much. It would be hard for me to recapture that feeling—life wasn’t so easy anymore. Small things pricked my heart. In those early days, I lived in a world of overwhelming sensations; it was like I had just fallen out of love.","author":"Banana Yoshimoto","tags":["reflection"],"id":19806,"author_id":"Banana+Yoshimoto"},{"text":"Things that don't matter at all to one person can hurt another so deeply it seems as bad as dying.","author":"Banana Yoshimoto","tags":["hurt"],"id":27737,"author_id":"Banana+Yoshimoto"},{"text":"We ran into lots of old friends. Friends from elementary school, junior high school, high school. Everyone had matured in their own way, and even as we stood face to face with them they seemed like people from dreams, sudden glimpses through the fences of our tangled memories. We smiled and waved, exchanged a few words, and then walked on in our separate directions.","author":"Banana Yoshimoto","tags":["time"],"id":49897,"author_id":"Banana+Yoshimoto"},{"text":"It was only after my head started reeling and my body started weaving and I tumbled into bed that I'd hear that soothing voice singing...The reverbations of that voice wandered sweetly, softly, working like a massage on the area of my heart that was the most tightly clenched, helping those knots to loosen. It was like the rush of waves, and like the laughter of people I'd met in all kinds of places, people I'd become friendly with and then separated from, and like the kind words all those people had said to me, and like the mewing of a cat I had lost, and like the mixture of noises that rang in the background in a place that was dear to me, a place far away, a place that no longer existed, and like the rushing of trees that whisked past my ears as I breathed in a scent of fresh greenery on a trip someplace... The voice was like a combination of all this.","author":"Banana Yoshimoto","tags":["sleep"],"id":55237,"author_id":"Banana+Yoshimoto"},{"text":"No matter where you are, you're always a bit on your own, always an outsider.","author":"Banana Yoshimoto","tags":["journey","life","travel"],"id":62182,"author_id":"Banana+Yoshimoto"},{"text":"My fury was lofty, pure, cool. It was an emotion that none of these people, struggling so hard to impose a shape on life when life has no shape, could begin to understand.","author":"Banana Yoshimoto","tags":["anger"],"id":64586,"author_id":"Banana+Yoshimoto"},{"text":"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.","author":"Banana Yoshimoto","tags":["depression","despair","loss","personal-insights"],"id":68730,"author_id":"Banana+Yoshimoto"},{"text":"But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.","author":"Banana Yoshimoto","tags":["guilt","life","living","uncertainty"],"id":71899,"author_id":"Banana+Yoshimoto"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":68,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}