Kazuo Ishiguro quotes - page 5

When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you get older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you. (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Why, Mr Stevens, why, why, why do you always have to pretend? View quote
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. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
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. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
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. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
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. View quote
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. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
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. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
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. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on. (Kazuo Ishiguro)
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. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
I'm very fortunate in that I don't have money problems. I have lunch with my wife at home. I don't have to commute, so I have much more time with my family. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
I think jogging is bad for your health. All that pressure on the knees and back cannot be good for you. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
You're always in a rush, or else you're too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk. View quote
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. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
And what made these heart-to-hearts possible--you might even say what made the whole friendship possible during that time--was this understanding we had that anything we told each other during these moments would be treated with careful respect: that we'd honor confidences, and that no matter how much we rowed, we wouldn't use against each other anything we'd talked about during those sessions. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
And so we stood together like that, at the top of that field for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us from being swept away into the night. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking. (Kazuo Ishiguro)
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. View quote
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. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro
I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, and maybe even call. View quote
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. View quote
Kazuo Ishiguro