Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

“All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow's sky. That's what I want now, and I think it's what you should want too. But it will be too late soon. We'll become too set to change. If we don't take our chance now, another may never come for either of us.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“When we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we grow up, and we were free to travel around the counry, we would always go and find it in Norfolk ... And that's why years and years later, that day Tommy and I found another copy of that lost tape of mine in a town on the Norfolk coast, we didn't just think it pretty funny; we both felt deep down some tug, some old wish to believe again in something that was once close to our hearts.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“But then again I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn't like these raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I'm wondering if without our memories, there's nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“A few minutes later, he said suddenly: 'Kath, can we stop? I'm sorry, I need to get out a minute.'
... I could make out in the mid-distance, near where the field began to fall away, Tommy's figure, raging, shouting, flinging his fists and kicking out. I caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight, caked in mud and distorted with fury, then I reached for his failing arms and held on tight. He tried to shake me off, but I kept holding on, until he stopped shouting and I felt the fight go out of him. Then I realised he too had his arms around me. And so we stood together like that, at the top of the field, for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us being swept away into the night.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they'd once belonged to the sea.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

What do you think dignity's all about?'
The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“And what made these heart-to-hearts possible
you might even say what made the whole friendship possible during that time
was this understanding we had that anything we told each other during these moments would be treated with careful respect: that we'd honor confidences, and that no matter how much we rowed, we wouldn't use against each other anything we'd talked about during those sessions.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you get older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood. He knew he was close to completing and so that's what he was doing: getting me to describe things to him, so they'd really sink in, so that maybe during those sleepless nights, with the drugs and the paint and the exhaustion, the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“There is certainly a satisfaction and dignity to be gained in coming to terms with the mistakes one has made in the course of one's life”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Yet are you so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?"
"It may be for some, father, but not for us. Axl and I wish to have again the happy moments we shared together. To be robbed of them is as if a thief came in the night and took what's most precious from us."
"Yet the mist covers all memories, the bad as well as the good. Isn't that so, mistress?"
"We'll have the bad ones come back too, even if they make us weep or shake with anger. For isn't it the life we've shared?

— Kazuo Ishiguro

But God will know the slow tread of an old couple's love for each other, and understand how black shadows make part of its whole.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“When it was too late for rescue, it was still early enough for revenge.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“Who knows what will come when quick-tongued men make ancient grievances rhyme with fresh desire for land and conquest?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“Yes, I do love my husband. I didn't at first. I didn't at first for a long time. When I left Darlington Hall all those years ago, I never realized I was really, truly leaving. I believe I thought of it as simply another ruse, Mr. Stevens, to annoy you. It was a shock to come out here and find myself actually married. For a long time, I was very unhappy, very unhappy indeed.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

For their kind do not know what it is to risk everything in the endeavor to rise above the mediocre.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“It didn't hurt, did it? When I hit you?" "Sure. Fractured skull. Concussion, the lot ... " "But seriously, Kath. No hard feelings, right? I'm awfully sorry. I honestly am.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“I suppose it had something to do with it being a secret, just how much it had meant to me. Maybe all of us at Hailsham had little secrets like that
little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone with our fears and longings. But the very fact that we had such needs would have felt wrong to us at the time
like somehow we were letting the side down.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Are you still there, Axl?"
"Still here, princess.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“You'll figure it out! You get on your plane and I'll get on mine. And we'll see which one crashes!”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“You've got to enjoy yourself. The evening's the best part of the day. You've done your day's work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it. That's how I look at it. Ask anybody, they'll all tell you. The evening's the best part of the day.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“The rest of my life stretches out as an emptiness before me.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“We're the only ones who care now. The likes of you and me, Ono, when we look back over our lives and see they were flawed, we're the only ones who care now.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“Everything suddenly felt perfect: an hour set aside, stretching ahead of us, and there wasn't a better way to spend it. I had to really hold myself back from giggling stupidly, or jumping up and down on the pavement like a little kid.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“People are not two-thirds one thing and the remainder something else. Temperament, personality, or outlook don't divide quite like that. The bits don't separate clearly. You end up a funny homogeneous mixture. This is something that will become more common in the latter part of the century-people with mixed cultural backgrounds, and mixed racial backgrounds. That's the way the world is going.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“Don't keep looking back all the time, you're bound to get depressed. And all right, you can't do your job as well as you used to. But it's the same for all of us, see? We've all got to put our feet up at some point ... you've got to keep looking forward.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“When the hour's too late for rescue, it's still early enough for revenge.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“Make no mistake about it, my child, Marie-Claude is on your side and will always be on your side. Is she afraid of you? We're all afraid of you. I myself had to fight back my dread of you all almost every day I was at Hailsham. There were times I'd look down at you all from my study window and I'd feel such revulsion ...”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“Their points sharpened like giant pencils, completely”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“It was a fine feeling indeed to be standing up there like that, with the sound of summer all around one and a light breeze on one's face. And I believe it was then, looking on that view, that I began for the first time to adopt a frame of mind appropriate for the journey before me. For it was then that I felt the first healthy flush of anticipation for the many interesting experiences I know these days ahead hold in store for me.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“The earlier years - the ones I've just been telling you about - they tend to blur into each other as a kind of golden time, and when I think about them at all, even the not-so-great things, I can't help feeling a sort of glow.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“I don't hang out with the glitteringly successful people; I hang out with people who've been friends for many years, and to some extent I feel my worldly success is a bit uncomfortable for them.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer's life with the writing. I think that's something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public now.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it's going to.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“I try to always go for something ... very interior, following thoughts and memories, something that I think is difficult to do on the screen, which is essentially a third-person medium.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“I don't have a deep link with England like, say, Jonathan Coe or Hanif Kureishi might demonstrate. For me, it is like a mythical place.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“I'm always trying to make something that is impossible to film. Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody's head.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“If you look at my last songs and first short stories, there is a real connection between them.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

When I was younger, I didn't read that much. I was more interested in film and music. Now I'm curious. I want to know what it's all about.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“There comes a point when you can more or less count the number of books you're going to write before you die.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“My wife is the most savage critic. She doesn't feel intimidated by my reputation. As far as she's concerned, she's just criticising a boyfriend who'd recently had a go at fiction. She can tell me to abandon whole novels.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“I had been plunged into a different world. I found myself spending half my time answering weird questions on book tours in the Midwest. People would stand up and explain to me the situation in their office and ask me whether they should resign or not.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

The book was at a reasonably high position on the New York Times ... before I was in the country. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if my presence here would push it up or down.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“I was very young when I prepared those prints. I suspect the reason I couldn't celebrate the floating world was that I couldn't bring myself to believe in its worth. Young men are often guilt-ridden about pleasure, and I suppose I was no different. I suppose I thought that to pass away one's time in such places, to spend one's skills celebrating things so intangible and transient, I suppose I thought it all rather wasteful, all rather decadent. It's hard to appreciate the beauty of a world when one doubts its very validity”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“If you were a boy and a girl and you were in love with each other, really, properly in love, and if you could show it, then the people who run Hailsham, they sorted it out for you. They sorted it out so you could have a few years together before you began your donations.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro