Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Every country should have a strong literary tradition of its own at the center, but it should also have an interest in other countries.

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.

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

One need hardly dwell on the catastrophic possibility of uttering a bantering remark only to discover it wholly inappropriate

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.

My donors have always tended to do much better than expected.

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.

There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it's going to.

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.

I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on.

When I was younger, I didn't read that much. I was more interested in film and music. Now I'm curious. I want to know what it's all about.

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

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.

So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy

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

What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that's been given to them, and find some dignity.

I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.

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.

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

I felt slightly superior to student politics, for instance. I had no reason to think this, but I thought of myself as slightly more seasoned. I became quite cynical talking to my student friends.

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.

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.

I try to always go for something... very interior, following thoughts and memories, something that I think is difficult to do on the screen, which is essentially a third-person medium.

And if these incidents now seem full of significance and all of a piece, it's probably because I'm looking at them in the light of what came later.

I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel you can get right inside somebody's head.

There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.

She might be a great person, but life's so much bigger than just loving someone.

Where once we fought for land and God, we now fought to avenge fallen comrades, themselves slaughtered in vengeance. Where could it end? Babes growing to men knowing only days of war.

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

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

The truth is, Japan is headed for crisis. We are in the hands of greedy businessmen and weak politicians. Such people will see to it poverty grows every day.

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.

Democracy is a fine thing. But that doesn't mean citizens have a right to run riot whenever they disagree with something.#Page: 120

Revolution? Really, Ono! The communists want a revolution. We want nothing of the sort. Quite the opposite, in fact. We wish for a restoration.

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

How so much honourable is such a contest, in which one's moral conduct and achievement are brought as witnesses rather than the size of one's purse.#Page: 10

It might be just some trend that came and went, ' I said. 'But for us, it's our life.

Our life together's like a tale with a happy end, no matter what turns it took in the way.