Kazuo Ishiguro Book Quotes & Sayings

We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact - new, adventure, surprise; unique, individual, person, vocation; time, history, future; freedom, progress, spirit; faith, hope, justice - are the gifts of the Jews. — Thomas Cahill

You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness. — Zig Ziglar

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

Throughout my career I've struggled to encourage people to read my books on a more metaphorical level. I'm less attached to my settings than, for example, Saul Bellow. The setting of a novel for me is just a part of the technique. I choose it at the end. — Kazuo Ishiguro

When I see films made from books, I make a huge effort not to remember the book. It's important to see the film as a film. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Somebody could take a picture of me from across the room, and I would feel like I wanted to rip their face off. — Evangeline Lilly

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

I mean, I really liked those guys and the experience of doing Raiders was really good for me, but I did not really want to be involved - I only did Jedi, as I really owed George a favor. — Lawrence Kasdan

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

Dear agony,
just let go of me,
suffer slowly,
is this the way it's gotta be? — Breaking Benjamin

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

Let people go on talking as they like, and we will go on living as we think best. — Willa Cather

Let it be whatever it will be. Give up trying to manipulate. This is Freedom. — Mooji

The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society. — Karl Marx

In reading we must become creators. — Madeleine L'Engle

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

Women are the only people I am afraid of who I never thought would hurt me — Abraham Lincoln

God loves us for ourselves. He values our love more than he values galaxies of new created worlds. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

I've worked really hard, but I know people who have worked even harder but didn't have the chances I've had. — David Lindsay-Abaire

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

In any first-class work of art, you can find passages that in themselves are extremely boring, but try to cut them out, as they are in an abridged edition, and you lose the life of the work. Don't think that art that is alive can remain on the same level of interest throughout - and the same is true of life. — W. H. Auden

She felt whatever emotions she felt, but feeling was never a useful substitute for doing, and she never let the former get in the way of the latter. If anything, she used her emotions to motivate her and help her concentrate. The emphasis for her was always on doing what needed to be done. — Will Schwalbe

You are bruised.'
'Am I? I hadn't noticed.'
'Lucrezia says you killed the bastard.'
... Cesare's hands were shaking. Hard, sun-darkened hands made to hold a sword or lance unflinchingly, but they trembled against my pale skin. — Sara Poole

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

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