Top 100 Ishiguro Quotes
#1. Most of my favorite writers are over forty, and so I suppose I'll only name a few of the writers whose work I find myself constantly returning to: Edward P. Jones, Marilynne Robinson, Kazuo Ishiguro, V. S. Naipaul, Toni Morrison, and Philip Roth.
Dinaw Mengestu
#2. I couldn't speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British, and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I'm regarded as one of their own in Japan.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#3. For some reason, we called it "umbrella sex"; if you fancied someone your own sex, you were "an umbrella.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#4. 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
#5. My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. When it was too late for rescue, it was still early enough for revenge.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#9. But then again I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn't like these raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I'm wondering if without our memories, there's nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#10. As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought throughly.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#11. Perhaps God's so deeply ashamed of us, of something we did, that he's wishing himself to forget.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#12. 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.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#13. I do feel part of that generation of people who were rather idealistic in the '70s and became disillusioned in the '80s. Not just about social services issues, but the world.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#14. Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#15. 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
#16. for if we're mortal let us at least shine handsomely in God's eyes while we walk this earth! Like
Kazuo Ishiguro
#17. 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.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. She might be a great person, but life's so much bigger than just loving someone.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#22. It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#23. 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.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#24. Then pointing to Edwin's shoes, he said: "Those look skilfully crafted. Did you make them yourself?" "Master Baldwin made them for me. The most skilled shoemaker in the village,
Kazuo Ishiguro
#25. If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#26. But you will no doubt agree that the very best staff plans are those which give clear margins of error to allow for those days when an employee is ill or for one reason or another below par.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#27. 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
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. Night, and besides, was ably helped by brave comrades." "The comrades he speaks of," Ivor said, "were too busy
Kazuo Ishiguro
#32. 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
#33. 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
#35. 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
#36. I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on and many that I had no control over whatsoever.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#37. How is it possible to hate so deeply for deeds not yet done?
Kazuo Ishiguro
#38. 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
#39. One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#40. Don't keep looking back all the time, you're bound to get depressed. And all right, you can't do your job as well as you used to. But it's the same for all of us, see? We've all got to put our feet up at some point ... you've got to keep looking forward.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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 ...
Kazuo Ishiguro
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. I think genre rules should be porous, if not nonexistent.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#47. We have the satisfaction of knowing that whatever we did, we did at the time in the best of faith. Of course, we took some bold steps and often did things with much single-mindedness; but this is surely preferable to never putting one's convictions to the test, for lack of will or courage.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#48. Today's world is too foul a place for fine and noble instincts.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#49. I think jogging is bad for your health. All that pressure on the knees and back cannot be good for you.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#50. Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#51. This country awakens so many memories, though each seems like some restless sparrow I know will flee any moment into the breeze.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#52. 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
Kazuo Ishiguro
#54. 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
#55. There are things I am more interested in than the clone thing. How are they trying to find their place in the world and make sense of their lives? To what extent can they transcend their fate? As time starts to run out, what are the things that really matter?
Kazuo Ishiguro
#56. 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
#57. If you look at my last songs and first short stories, there is a real connection between them.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#58. My donors have always tended to do much better than expected.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#59. 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
#60. I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#61. 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
#62. To see the best before I have properly begun would be somewhat premature.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#63. What kind of god is it, sir, wishes wrong to go forgotten and unpunished?
Kazuo Ishiguro
#64. Its was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#65. 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
#66. In fact, the harder he tried, the more laughable his efforts turned out.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#67. 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.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#68. I like the fact that by mimicking the way memory works, a writer can actually write in a fluid way - one solid scene doesn't have to fall on another solid scene, you can just have a fragment that then dovetails into another one that took place 30 years apart from it.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#69. Dinner will be served at the usual time and I am pleased to say there will be no discernible traces left of the recent occurrence by that time.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. The danger isn't the river's speed, friend, but its slowness.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#73. Why, Mr Stevens, why, why, why do you always have to pretend?
Kazuo Ishiguro
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to write something strange and difficult, that was the time.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#78. The world is crawling with authors touring now. They're like performance artists.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#79. 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
#80. 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.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#81. Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory ...
Kazuo Ishiguro
#82. For their kind do not know what it is to risk everything in the endeavor to rise above the mediocre.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#83. I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#84. 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
#86. 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
#87. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#88. What I mean is, right from that first time, there was
something in Tommy's manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed to
say: Yes, we're doing this now and I'm glad we're doing it now. But what a
pity we left it so late.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#89. Then he took the sword in both hands and raised it - and Gawain's posture took on an unmistakable grandeur.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#90. 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
#91. There's something very misleading about the literary culture that looks at writers in their 30s and calls them 'budding' or 'promising', when in fact they're peaking.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#92. 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
#93. All in all, this is an excellent place to partake of morning tea, but surprisingly few of the inhabitants of Taunton seem to wish to avail themselves of it. At
Kazuo Ishiguro
#94. 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
#95. The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#96. Our life together's like a tale with a happy end, no matter what turns it took in the way.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#97. For however one may come in later years to reassess one's achievements, it is always a consolation to know that one's life has contained a moment or two or real satisfaction
Kazuo Ishiguro
#98. Every country should have a strong literary tradition of its own at the center, but it should also have an interest in other countries.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#99. You say you're sure? Sure that you're in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple?
Kazuo Ishiguro
#100. I loved cowboy films and TV series, and I learned bits of English from them. My favorite was 'Laramie', with Robert Fuller and John Smith. I used to watch 'The Lone Ranger', which had been famous in Japan as well. I idolized these cowboys.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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