Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

Democracy is a fine thing. But that doesn't mean citizens have a right to run riot whenever they dis...

In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognise su...

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

What is more, sir," his lordship went on, "I believe I have a good idea of what you mean by 'profess...

As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is pe...

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

Naturally—and why should I not admit this—I have occasionally wondered to myself how things might ha...

We may now understand better, too, why my father was so fond of the story of the butler who failed t...

All you decent, well-meaning gentlemen, let me ask you, have you any idea what sort of place the wor...

What do you think dignity's all about?'The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by...

Its was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and st...

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heig...

Revolution? Really, Ono! The communists want a revolution. We want nothing of the sort. Quite the op...

An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.

The truth is, Japan is headed for crisis. We are in the hands of greedy businessmen and weak politic...

That's most interesting. But I was no more a mind-reader then than today. Iwas weeping for an altoge...

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. T...

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

It was like there was some parallel universe we all vanished off to where we had all this sex.

I can see,’ Miss Emily said, ‘that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can c...

I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childho...

when we were eleven, say, we really weren't interested in each other's poems at all. . . . But we di...

Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit...

What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been ...

I needed to get familiar with sex, and it would be just as well to practise first with a boy I didn'...

You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you...

I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people ...

What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save...

Maybe from as early as when you're five or six, there's been a whisper going at the back of your hea...

I suppose it had something to do with it being a secret, just how much it had meant to me. Maybe all...

When we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn...

You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lie...

And what made these heart-to-hearts possible--you might even say what made the whole friendship poss...

As I’ve said, it wasn’t until a long time afterwards—long after I’d left the Cottages—that I realize...

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

She always wanted to believe in things.

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

You see, because [Norfolk is] stuck out here on the east, on this hump jutting into the sea, it's no...

The earlier years - the ones I've just been telling you about - they tend to blur into each other as...

But you play that passage like it's the -memory- of love. You're so young, yet you know desertion, a...

This country awakens so many memories, though each seems like some restless sparrow I know will flee...

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

Where once we fought for land and God, we now fought to avenge fallen comrades, themselves slaughter...

You're always in a rush, or else you're too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, th...

What I mean is, right from that first time, there wassomething in Tommy's manner that was tinged wit...

Maybe all of us at Hailsam had little secrets like that -- little private nooks created out of thin ...

The stranger thought it might be God himself had forgotten much from our pasts, events far distant, ...

When we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn...

For a great many people, the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day. Perhaps, then, there is ...

Nos-tal-gic,’ Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a wo...

Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for th...

Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churche...

All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only ...

Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from...

That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming a...

But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment tur...

I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words o...

When my own time comes, will I too long for the sea? I think I will be content enough with the soil....

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

More fundamentally, I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, a...

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

People are not two-thirds one thing and the remainder something else. Temperament, personality, or o...

There's something peculiar about writing fiction. It requires an interesting balance between seeing ...

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

I loved cowboy films and TV series, and I learned bits of English from them. My favorite was 'Larami...

When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the...

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

It was a fine feeling indeed to be standing up there like that, with the sound of summer all around ...

When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More sc...

Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in ...

How so much honourable is such a contest, in which one's moral conduct and achievement are brought a...

A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserve...