Mitsuyo Kakuta Quotes & Sayings

But Aoi found it impossible to fully open herself up to any of her
new friends. She could laugh with them, rant with them, even play
at falling in love with them. But there remained a certain line she was loath to let anybody cross, and if someone tried to come closer
than that, she hastily erected a wall, not answering the phone and
staying away from classes until a more comfortable distance reasserted
itself. — Mitsuyo Kakuta

Every country's different.
All that happy talk you hear about understanding one another
and people everywhere being basically the same, it's all a bunch
of crap. Everybody's different. And if you don't realize that, you're
never going to experience anything truly new. — Mitsuyo Kakuta

She
was afraid of getting too close to anyone. To her, closeness represented
a loss rather than a gain. — Mitsuyo Kakuta

But to me, it's a whole
lot more important to find something that makes you unafraid of
being alone, rather than to have so many friends that you wind up
being terrified of solitude. — Mitsuyo Kakuta

Something about the way Nanako
talked reminded Aoi of women her mother's age. Women who took
no interest in most of what went on in the world and, within the
one tiny little slice of the world they did care about, refused to
believe that a single shred of ill will or distrust or any other troubling
sentiment could exist. The kind of woman she'd seen strike
up conversations with her mother in train stations and tourist spots
as if they were sisters or something. They were friendly as could be,
and they'd overwhelm you with kindness. But let anything go wrong,
Aoi reminded herself, and they would coldly shove you away almost
every time. — Mitsuyo Kakuta

There's that, too, but more than that, what people are saying
about me right now, it's not really about me, it's about them. It's not
my baggage to carry. Why should I want to shoulder everybody else's
burdens and beat myself up over their problems? I'm not that bighearted. — Mitsuyo Kakuta