Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

72 Sourced Quotes

More fundamentally, I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

Kazuo Ishiguro
An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.

Kazuo Ishiguro
I have a sense of having just left without saying goodbye, and of this whole other world just kind of fading away. … I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

Kazuo Ishiguro
I took one glance at her in that hospital bed under the dull light and recognised the look on her face, which I'd seen on donors often enough before. It was like she was willing her eyes to see right inside herself, so she could patrol and marshal all the better the separate areas of pain in her body.

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
You're always in a rush, or else you're too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk.

Kazuo Ishiguro
Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.

Kazuo Ishiguro
Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.

Kazuo Ishiguro
I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me.

Kazuo Ishiguro
You should never believe an author if he tells you why he has certain recurring themes.

Kazuo Ishiguro
Even at the time, I realised this couldn't be right, that this interpretation didn't fit with the rest of the lyrics. But that wasn't an issue with me. The song was about what I said, and I used to listen to it again and again, on my own, whenever I got the chance.

Kazuo Ishiguro
It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you.

Kazuo Ishiguro
Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways.

Kazuo Ishiguro
It was like there was some parallel universe we all vanished off to where we had all this sex.

Kazuo Ishiguro
When a man induces his wife to turn suspicious thoughts against her own father, then that is surely cause enough for resentment.

Kazuo Ishiguro
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.

Kazuo Ishiguro
The English landscape at its finest - such as I saw this morning - possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess. It is, I believe, a quality that will mark out the English landscape to any objective observer as the most deeply satisfying in the world, and this quality is probably best summed up by the term 'greatness.'

Kazuo Ishiguro
The sales were important to us because that was how we got hold of things from outside.

Kazuo Ishiguro
After all, when we were children, when things went wrong, there wasn't much we could do to help put it right. But now we're adults, now we can. That's the thing, you see? Look at us, Akira. After all this time, we can finally put things right. Remember, old chap, how we used to play those games? Over and over? How we used to pretend we were detectives searching for my father? Now we're grown, we can at last put things right.

Kazuo Ishiguro
As with a wound on one's own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things

Kazuo Ishiguro
Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.

Kazuo Ishiguro
What is the gallery? why should she have a gallery of things done by us?

Kazuo Ishiguro
If I'm alone at home, I get increasingly restless, bothered by the idea that I'm missing some crucial encounter out there somewhere. But if I'm left by myself in someone else's place, I often find myself a nice sense of peace engulfing me. I love sinking into an unfamiliar sofa with whatever book happens to be lying nearby.

Kazuo Ishiguro
As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought throughly.

Kazuo Ishiguro
Miss Emily had an intellect you could slice logs with.

Kazuo Ishiguro
Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?

Kazuo Ishiguro
Kath, I've been looking all over for you. I mean't to say sorry. I mean, I'm really, really sorry. I honestly didn't mean to hit you the other day. I wouldn't dream of hitting a girl, and even if I did, I'd never want to hit you. I'm really, really sorry.

Kazuo Ishiguro
Her general drift was clear enough: we were all very special, being Hailsham students, and so it was all the more disappointing when we behave badly.

Kazuo Ishiguro
All you decent, well-meaning gentlemen, let me ask you, have you any idea what sort of place the world is becoming all around you? The days when you could act out of your noble instincts are over. Except of course, you here in Europe don't yet seem to know it.

Kazuo Ishiguro
It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to.

Kazuo Ishiguro