Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes & Sayings

Be merciful and leave this place. Leave this country to rest in forgetfulness. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Can it be, husband, you still fear the mist's fading, never mind the promise I made you? — Kazuo Ishiguro

You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have been Hailsham if we hadn't. Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you, I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods. Lucy was well-meaning enough. But if she'd have her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered. Look at you both now! I'm so proud to see you both. You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn't be who you are today if we'd not protected you. You wouldn't have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn't have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you? So she had to go. — Kazuo Ishiguro

To some extent, at least, you have to shield children from what you know and drip-feed information to them. Sometimes that is kindly meant, and sometimes not. — 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

When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go. That is what I saw. It wasn't really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you and it broke my heart. And I've never forgotten. Then — Kazuo Ishiguro

It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven, could unravel and separate over a thing like that. But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task. If we'd understood that back then-who knows?-maybe we'd have kept a tighter hold of one another. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I really appreciated having the tape-and that song-back again. Even then, it was mainly a nostalgia thing, and today, if I happen to get the tape out and look at it, it brings back memories of that afternoon in Norfolk every bit as much as it does our Hailsham days. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

If you go to Tokyo, I think it becomes very obvious that there's this almost seamless mixture of popular culture and Japanese traditional culture. — Kazuo Ishiguro

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The woods played on our imaginations the most after dark, in our dorms as we were trying to fall asleep. You almost thought then you could hear the wind rustling the branches, and talking about it seemed only to make things worse. I remember one night, when we were furious with Marge K.
she'd done something really embarrassing to us during the day
we chose to punish her by hauling her out of bed, holding her face against the window pane and ordering her to look up at the woods. At first she kept her eyes screwed shut, but we twisted her arms and forced open her eyelids until she saw the distant outline against the moonlit sky, and that was enough to ensure for her a sobbing night of terror. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time, it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I wouldn't want to try to adapt something of my own. It would be like going back to school and doing all my exams again. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Today's world is too foul a place for fine and noble instincts. — 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

When we were eleven, say, we really weren't interested in each other's poems at all ... But we didn't know a thing about poetry. We didn't care about it. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I'm not at all interested in the brave who fight against the odds and win. I am interested in those who accept their lot, as that is what many people in the world are doing. They do their best in ghastly conditions. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I think the judging process is full of integrity, compared to some other prizes around the world. The fact that they change the panel of judges every year keeps it from becoming corrupt. I think it's very difficult if you've got judges for life; obviously relationships are cultivated between judges and authors, and publishing houses. — 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

Keiko, unlike Niki was pure Japanese, and more than one newspaper was quick to pick up on this fact. The English are fond of their idea that our race has an instinct for suicide,
as if further explanations are unnecessary; for that was all they reported, that she was Japanese and that she had hung herself in her room. — Kazuo Ishiguro

People were incredibly kind to our family and went out of their way to help. — 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

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

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

I don't think it's any fun, even if you are one of the most respected authors in the world like Margaret Atwood, to keep being nominated and not win. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Silence is just as likely to indicate the most profound ideas forming, the deepest energies being summoned. — 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 was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half closed my eyes and imaginated this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, maybe even call. — Kazuo Ishiguro

When you're lucky enough to have a good film made of your novel - and 'Never Let Me Go' is, believe me, a heartbreakingly good film indeed - you get wonderfully talented individuals each focusing on their special area. — Kazuo Ishiguro

When Winston Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favour of the war effort, he simply asked,'then what are we fighting for? — 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

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

I think jogging is bad for your health. All that pressure on the knees and back cannot be good for you. — Kazuo Ishiguro

What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time. — Kazuo Ishiguro

What I mean is that we were ambitious, in a way that would have been unusual a generation before, to serve gentlemen who were, so to speak, furthering the progress of humanity. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The obsessions with eloquence and general knowledge would appear to be ones that emerged with our generation, probably in the wake of Mr Marshall, when lesser men trying to emulate his greatness mistook the superficial for the essence. — Kazuo Ishiguro

She thinks I've let myself down,' he was saying. 'But I haven't. I'm doing perfectly okay. Endless horizons are all very well when you're young. But get to your age, you've got to ... you've got to get some perspective. That's what kept going round in my head whenever she got unbearable about it. Perspective, she needs perspective. And I kept saying to myself, look, I'm doing okay. Look at loads of other people, people we know. Look at Ray. Look what a pig's arse he's making of his life. She needs perspective. — 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

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

Why, Mr Stevens, why, why, why do you always have to pretend? — Kazuo Ishiguro

It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. — 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

She always wanted to believe in things. — Kazuo Ishiguro

After all, if a community could reach some sort of an equilibrium without having to be guided by an outsider, then so much the better. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I want my words to survive translation. I know when I write a book now I will have to go and spend three days being intensely interrogated by journalists in Denmark or wherever. That fact, I believe, informs the way I write - with those Danish journalists leaning over my shoulder. — Kazuo Ishiguro

You could sense just from the huge sky, that you were walking towards the sea. — Kazuo Ishiguro

What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one's life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Oji just happened to suggest he had one or two — Kazuo Ishiguro

And when someone's asking you to do something in such a pleading way, everything goes against saying no. I — Kazuo Ishiguro

Naturally - and why should I not admit this - I have occasionally wondered to myself how things might have turned out in the long run ... I only speculate this now because in the light of subsequent events, it could well be argued that in making my decision ... I was perhaps not entirely aware of the full implications of what I was doing. Indeed, it might even be said that this small decision of mine constituted something of a key turning point; that that decision set things on an inevitable course towards what eventually happened.
But then, I suppose, when with the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one's past for such 'turning points', one is apt to start seeing them everywhere ... What would have transpired, one may ask, had one responded slightly differently ... ? And perhaps - occurring as it did around the same time as these events? — Kazuo Ishiguro

After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished? — Kazuo Ishiguro

For some reason, we called it "umbrella sex"; if you fancied someone your own sex, you were "an umbrella. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The colonel nodded. "Our childhood seems so far away now. All this" - he gestured out of the vehicle - "so much suffering. One of our Japanese poets, a court lady many years ago, wrote how sad this was. She wrote of how our childhood becomes like a foreign land once we have grown."
"Well, Colonel, it's hardly a foreign land to me. In many ways, it's where I've continued to live all my life. It's only now I've started to make my journey from it. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I quizzed him a lot on this point and i suspect the truth was that it was like a lot of things at that age: you don't have any clear reason, you just do it. You do it because you think it might get a laugh, or because you want to see if it'll cause a stir. And when you're asked to explain afterwards, it doesn't seem to make any sense. — Kazuo Ishiguro

When my own time comes, will I too long for the sea? I think I will be content enough with the soil. And I will not demand the exact spot, but let it be within this country Horace and I have spent the years roaming contentedly. — Kazuo Ishiguro

You're much the senior in years, Master Axl, but in matters of blood, it may be I'm the elder and you the youth. I've seen dark hatred as bottomless as the sea on the faces of old women and tender children, and some days felt such hatred myself. — 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

I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds. — Kazuo Ishiguro

And it started to dawn on me, I suppose, that a lot of things I'd always assumed I'd plenty of time to get round to doing, I might now have to act on pretty soon or else let them go forever. — 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

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

Abiding love that has endured the years - that we see only rarely. When we do, we're only too glad to ferry the couple together. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The danger isn't the river's speed, friend, but its slowness. — Kazuo Ishiguro

This country awakens so many memories, though each seems like some restless sparrow I know will flee any moment into the breeze. — Kazuo Ishiguro

When the hour's too late for rescue, it's still early enough for revenge. — Kazuo Ishiguro

You could say I'd rewritten the same novel three times and I thought I had to move on. The success of the book, and then the movie, had by then also created a commercial expectation and I remember touring America and seeing people in the audiences who I thought might not want to read the books I wanted to write next. My constituency had become broader, but more mysterious to me. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Because whatever the song was really about, in my head, when I was dancing, I had my own version. You see, I imagined it was about this woman who'd been told she couldn't have babies. But then she'd had one, and she was so pleased, and she was holding it ever so tightly to her breast, really afraid something might separate them, and she's going baby, baby, never let me go. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

I suppose I do not on the whole greatly admire the 'Tortoises' of this world. While one may appreciate their plodding steadiness and ability to survive, one suspects their lack of frankness, their capacity for treachery. And I suppose, in the end, one despises their unwillingness to take chances in the name of ambition or for the sake of a principle they claim to believe in. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers. — Kazuo Ishiguro

People aren't quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They're not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different. — Kazuo Ishiguro

steps, deep in thought. A breeze was slightly disturbing his hair. Then, as we watched, he walked very slowly up the steps. At the top, he turned and came back down, a little faster. Turning once more, my father became still again for several seconds, contemplating the steps before him. Eventually, he climbed them a second time, very deliberately. This time he continued on across the grass until he had almost reached the summerhouse, then turned and came walking slowly back, his eyes never leaving the ground. In fact, I can describe his manner at that moment no better than the way Miss Kenton puts it in her letter; it was indeed 'as though he hoped to find some precious jewel he had dropped there'. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I think it's quite difficult to understand what kind of life a writer leads. They might be millionaires, or they might be starving people. — 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

I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel, world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It would be the saddest thing to me, princess. To walk separately from you, when the ground will let us go as we always did. Beatrice — 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

Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished? The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services. — Kazuo Ishiguro

This is the big question that we all have about our children: How much, how soon, do we tell our children the less comfortable facts about the world they're going to inherit? — Kazuo Ishiguro

But this small episode is as good an illustration as any of the hazards of uttering witticisms. By the very nature of a witticism, one is given very little time to assess its various possible repercussions before one is called to give voice to it, and one gravely risks uttering all manner of unsuitable things if one has not first acquired the necessary skill and experience. — Kazuo Ishiguro

But Ruth and Tommy never did anything gross in front of people, and if sometimes they cuddled or whatever, it felt like they were genuinely doing it for each other, not for an audience. — 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

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

What's going on here, Tommy? Has Keffers recruited you for his porn patrol? — Kazuo Ishiguro

Foolishness, sir. How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly? Or a peace hold for ever built on slaughter and a magician's trickery? — Kazuo Ishiguro

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory ... — Kazuo Ishiguro

Then he took the sword in both hands and raised it - and Gawain's posture took on an unmistakable grandeur. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Their points sharpened like giant pencils, completely — Kazuo Ishiguro

I think there is a huge difference between writers who have very big sales, and writers who have small sales. Even writers with very high reputations, even Nobel prize winners, often sell in very low figures. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I grew up in Britain before it became a multicultural place, so in many ways I have a nostalgia for an England that's vanished - the England of my childhood has actually disappeared. — Kazuo Ishiguro

You need to remember that. If you're to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you. — 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

Why should one not enjoy in a light-hearted sort of way stories of ladies and gentlemen who fall in love and express their feelings for each other, often in most elegant phrases? — Kazuo Ishiguro

I believe I have a good idea of what you mean by "professionalism". It appears to mean getting one's way by cheating and manipulating. It means ordering one's priorities according to greed and advantage rather than the desire to see goodness and justice prevail in the world. If that is the "professionalism" you refer to, sir, I don't much care for it and have no wish to acquire 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

I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that? — Kazuo Ishiguro

In the meantime, my father's condition had grown neither better nor worse. As I understood, he was asleep for much of the time, and indeed, I found him so on the few occasions I had a spare moment to ascend to that little attic room. I did not then have a chance actually to converse with him until that second evening after the return of his illness. — Kazuo Ishiguro