Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

72 Sourced Quotes

It's hard to appreciate the beauty of a world when one doubts its very validity….But I've long since lost all such doubts, Ono,' he continued. 'When I am an old man, when I look back over my life and see I have devoted it to the task of capturing the unique beauty of that world, I believe I will be well satisfied. And no man will make me believe I've wasted my time.

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
One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.

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
What I wished more than anything was that the thing hadn't happened at all, and I thought that by not mentioning it I'd be doing everyone else a favor.

Kazuo Ishiguro
Because maybe, in a way, we didn't leave it behind nearly as much as we might once have thought. Because somewhere underneath, a part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and no matter how much we despised ourselves for it—unable quite to let each other go.

Kazuo Ishiguro
What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint.

Kazuo Ishiguro
I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.

Kazuo Ishiguro
And I'm a Hailsham student - which is enough by itself sometimes to get people's backs up.

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
You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in this world. People's opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a certain point in this process.

Kazuo Ishiguro
Ruth, incidentally, was only the third or fourth donor I got to choose.

Kazuo Ishiguro