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

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

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

Plenty of couples, they start off loving each other, then get tired of each other, end up hating each other. Sometimes though it goes the other way. — 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

You say you're sure? Sure that you're in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple? — 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

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

Night, and besides, was ably helped by brave comrades." "The comrades he speaks of," Ivor said, "were too busy — 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

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

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

I think genre rules should be porous, if not nonexistent. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It was his reaction when I mention I was from Hailsham. He'd just come through his third donation, it hadn't gone well, and he must have known he wan't going to make it. He could hardly breathe, but he looked towards me and said: "Hailsham. I bet that was a beautiful place. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It would have been so stupid, Niki went on, If you would just accepted everything the way it was and just stayed where you were. At least you made an effort. — 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

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write. — 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 like novelists who can create other interesting worlds. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I can see,' Miss Emily said, 'that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can certainly be looked at like that. But think of it. You were lucky pawns. There was a certain climate and now it's gone. You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in the 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.'
'It might be just some trend that came and went,' I said. 'But for us, it's our life. — Kazuo Ishiguro

None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars. And none of you will be working in supermarkets as I heard some of you planning the other day.
Your lives are set out for you. You'll become adults, then before you're old, before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs. — 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

But that doesn't mean to say, of course, there aren't occasions now and then - extremely desolate occasions - when you think to yourself: 'What a terrible mistake I've made with my life.' And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life you might have had. For instance, I get to thinking about a life I may have had with you, Mr. Stevens. And I suppose that's when I get angry about some trivial little thing and leave. But each time I do, I realize before long - my rightful place is with my husband. After all, there's no turning back the clock now. One can't be forever dwelling on what might have been. One should realize one has as good as most, perhaps better, and be grateful. — 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

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don't go along with that. The memories I value most, I don't ever see them fading. — 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

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

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

Even though I spent the first five years of my life in Nagasaki, going to Japan can be really difficult. Even if they know I've been brought up in the West, they still expect me to understand all the subtleties of their culture, and if I get it wrong, it matters much more than if a British person gets it wrong. I find it intimidating. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I for one will never doubt that a desire to see 'justice in this world' lay at the heart of all his actions. — 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

Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in - particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth. — 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

It is all very well, in these changing times, to adapt one's work to take in duties not traditionally within one's realm; but bantering is of another dimension altogether. For one thing, how would one know for sure that at any given moment a response of the bantering sort is truly what is expected? One need hardly dwell on the catastrophic possibility of uttering a bantering remark only to discover it wholly inappropriate. — Kazuo Ishiguro

You see, because [Norfolk is] stuck out here on the east, on this hump jutting into the sea, it's not on the way to anywhere. People going north and south, they bypass it altogether. For that reason, it's a peaceful corner of England, rather nice. But it's also something of a lost corner.'
Someone claimed after the lesson that Miss Emily had said Norfolk was England's 'lost corner' because that was were all the lost property found in the country ended up.
Ruth said one evening, looking out at the sunset, that '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 were grown up, and we were free to travel the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk. — 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

Some of you will have fine monuments by which the living may remember the evil done to you. Some of you will have only crude wooden crosses or painted rocks, while yet others of you must remain hidden in the shadows of history. — 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

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

Maybe all of us at Hailsam had little secrets like that
little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone without fears and longing. — Kazuo Ishiguro

For we were, as I say, an idealistic generation for whom the question was not simply one of how well one practised one's skills, but to what end one did so; each of us harboured the desire to make our own small contribution to the creation of a better world, — 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

It's all right. I'm not upset. After all, they were just things. When you've lost your mother and your father, you can't care so much about things, can you? — Kazuo Ishiguro

When I write a novel, I want it to be completely different from a screenplay. I'm very conscious of the difference, and I want novels to work purely as novels. Otherwise I don't see how they'll survive - why don't we just all go to the movies or watch television. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It was like being given a maths problem when your brain's exhausted, and you know there's some far-off solution, but you can't work up the energy even to give it a go. Something in me just gave up. — 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

Look at all the Eastern writers who've written great Western literature. Kazuo Ishiguro. You'd never guess that The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go were written by a Japanese guy. But I can't think of anyone who's ever done the reverse
any Westerner who's written great Eastern literature. Well, maybe if we count Lawrence Durrell - does the Alexandria Quartet qualify as Eastern literature?"
"There is a very simple test," said Vikram. "Is it about bored, tired people having sex?"
"Yes," said the convert, surprised.
"Then it's western. — G. Willow Wilson

It had occurred to me to follow her through into the next room, visitors or no visitors, and bring her back for a talk. But in the end I had decided in favour of waiting where I was for her return. Sure enough, a few minutes later, Sophie had come back into the room, but something in her manner had prevented me from speaking and she had gone out again. In fact, although during the following half-hour Sophie had entered and left the room several more times, for all my resolve to make my feelings known to her, I had returned to my newspaper with a strong sense of hurt and frustration. — Kazuo Ishiguro

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened — 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

Our family arrived in England in 1960. At that time I thought the war was ancient history. But if I think of 15 years ago from now, that's 1990, and that seems like yesterday to me. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Perhaps God's so deeply ashamed of us, of something we did, that he's wishing himself to forget. — 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

A couple may claim to be bonded by love, but we boatmen may see instead resentment, anger, even hatred. Or a great barrenness. Sometimes a fear of loneliness and nothing more. — Kazuo Ishiguro

How often have you know it for the butler who is on everyone's lips one day as the greatest of his generation to be proved demonstrably within a few years to have been nothing of the sort? — Kazuo Ishiguro

Wasn't really, to tell you the truth. No shock at all." Then he went on: "I always told her she should go, told her she should go and find love, you know, true love. She deserves it, don't you think? That's where she's gone now. Off to find true love. Perhaps she'll find it too. Out there, on the South China Sea, who knows? Perhaps she'll meet a traveller, in a port, in a hotel, who knows? She's become a romantic, you see? I had to let her go." There were now tears welling in his eyes. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Indeed - why should I not admit it? - in that moment, my heart was breaking. — 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

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

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

What use is a god with boundless mercy, sir? You mock me as a pagan, yet the gods of my ancestors pronounce clearly their ways and punish severely when we break their laws. Your Christian god of mercy gives men licence to pursue their greed, their lust for land and blood, knowing a few prayers and a little penance will bring forgiveness and blessing. — 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

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

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 remember a huge tiredness coming over me, a kind of lethargy in the face of the tangled mess before me. It was like being given a maths problem when your brain's exhausted, and you know there's some far-off solution, but you can't work up the energy even to give it a go. — Kazuo Ishiguro

But you play that passage like it's the -memory- of love. You're so young, yet you know desertion, abandonment. That's why you play that third movement the way you do. Most cellists, they play it with joy. But for you, it's not about joy, it's about the memory of a joyful time that's gone for ever. — 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

I realised, of course, that other people used these roads; but that night, it seemed to me these dark byways of the country existed just for the likes of us, while the big glittering motorways with their huge signs and super cafes were for everyone else. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

I find Japanese books quite baffling when I read them in translation. It's only with Haruki Murakami that I find Japanse fiction that I can understand and relate to. He's a very international writer. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

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

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

We may now understand better, too, why my father was so fond of the story of the butler who failed to panic on discovering a tiger under the dining table; it was because he knew instinctively that somewhere in this story lay the kernel of what true 'dignity' is. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I don't know why, but it didn't seem an option for more than one of us to storm off, and I wanted to make sure that one was me. — 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

I have this feeling, that all it will take will be one moment, even a tiny moment, provided it's the correct one. Like a cord suddenly snapping and a thick curtain dropping to the floor to reveal a whole new world, a world full of sunlight and warmth. — Kazuo Ishiguro

If disappointments do come, you will carry on still. You will say, just as he does, I am so lucky. — 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

There's something peculiar about writing fiction. It requires an interesting balance between seeing the world as a child and having the wisdom of a middle-aged person. The further you get from childhood and the experience of the teenage years, the greater the danger of losing that wellspring. — Kazuo Ishiguro

A lot of the time, how you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to do with how good you were at "creating." Ruth — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

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

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

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

Might as well tell you. In that shop we were in, they had this shelf with loads of records and tapes. So I was looking for the one you lost that time. Do you remember, Kath? I never told you at the time, but I tried really hard to find it. I remember looking for ages. And when it looked in the end like it wasn't going to turn up, I just said to myself, one day I'll go to Norfolk and I'll find it there for her. — Kazuo Ishiguro