Banana Yoshimoto

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.

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.

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.

On nights like this when the air is so clear, you end up saying things you ordinarily wouldn__. Without even noticing what you__e doing, you open up your heart and just start talking to the person next to you__ou talk as if you have no audience but the glittering stars, far overhead.

But 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. I'm grateful for it.

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.

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

I love feeling the rhythm of other people's lives. It's like traveling.

And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more ...

Her eyes were those of someone who's just fallen in love, someone who sees nothing but her lover, someone who has no fear of anything. The eyes of someone who believes that every dream will come true, that reality will move if you just give it a push.

The way we think may be completely different, but you and I are an ancient, archetypal couple, the original man and woman. We are the model for Adam and Eve. For all couples in love, there comes a moment when a man gazes at a woman with the very same kind of realization. It is an infinite helix, the dance of two souls resonating, like the twist of DNA, like the vast universe.

Just being with Nakajima made me feel as if we were detached from history, and had no particular age.

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.

Nakajima__ past would always be there, so the foundation could crumble at any moment. That__ what happens, I realized, when people destroy other people.

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.

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.

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

But I have my life, I__ living it. It__ twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there__ something there.