Nocturnes Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

... my main objection to Mr. Graham's analogy was the implication that this 'dignity' was something one possessed or did not by a fluke of nature; and if one did not self-evidently have it, to strive after it would be as futile as an ugly woman trying to make herself beautiful. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

We always like to keep our children in a kind of bubble and censor the bad news about the world. We like to tell them the world is full of benevolent, nice people. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

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

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

I remember being taught all about how Japan was created by the gods, for instance. How we as a nation were divine and supreme. We had to memorize the text book word for word. Some things aren't such a loss, perhaps.' "But Jim, things aren't as simple as that. You clearly don't understand how such things worked. Things aren't nearly as simple as you presume. We devoted ourselves to ensuring that proper qualities were handed down, that children grew up with the correct attitude to their country, to their fellows. There was a spirit in Japan once, it bound us all together. Just imagine what it must be like being a young boy today. He's taught no values at school - except perhaps that he should selfishly demand whatever he wants out of life. He goes home and finds his parents fighting because his mother refuses to vote for his father's party. What a state of affairs. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

And there was a tree stump outside the Black Barn everyone called 'Dave's stump' because for over three years, until a few weeks before our arrival, he'd sat on it to read and write, sometimes even when it was raining or cold. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

It would have been so stupid, Niki went on, If you would just accepted everything the way it was and just stayed where you were. At least you made an effort. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

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

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

As I say, the happiness with which the pleasure-seekers gathering on this pier greeted this small event would tend to vouch for the correctness of my companion's words; for a great many people, the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day. Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day. ~ 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. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

I'm not at all interested in the brave who fight against the odds and win. I am interested in those who accept their lot, as that is what many people in the world are doing. They do their best in ghastly conditions. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory ... ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Wasn't really, to tell you the truth. No shock at all." Then he went on: "I always told her she should go, told her she should go and find love, you know, true love. She deserves it, don't you think? That's where she's gone now. Off to find true love. Perhaps she'll find it too. Out there, on the South China Sea, who knows? Perhaps she'll meet a traveller, in a port, in a hotel, who knows? She's become a romantic, you see? I had to let her go." There were now tears welling in his eyes. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

What's going on here, Tommy? Has Keffers recruited you for his porn patrol? ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

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

What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time. ~ 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

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

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

Left alone, I must quickly have drifted off into my own thoughts, for I did not notice the barman return. He must have done so, however, for I was soon drinking coffee, staring at the mirrored wall behind the bar - in which I could see not only my own reflection but much of the room behind me. After a while, for some reason, i found myself replaying in my head key moments from a football match I had attended many years earlier - an encounter between Germany and Holland. I adjusted my posture on the high-stool - I could see I was hunching excessively - and tried recalling the names of the players in the Dutch team that year. Rep, Krol, Haan, Neeskens. After several minutes I had succeeded in remembering all but two of the players, but these last two names remained just beyond the rim of my recall. As I tried to remember, the sound of the fountain behind me, which at first I had found quite soothing, began to annoy me. It seemed that if only it woulds stop, my memory would unlock and I would finally remember the names. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Can it be, husband, you still fear the mist's fading, never mind the promise I made you? ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

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 ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

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

I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

The obsessions with eloquence and general knowledge would appear to be ones that emerged with our generation, probably in the wake of Mr Marshall, when lesser men trying to emulate his greatness mistook the superficial for the essence. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that? ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Thinking back now, I can see we were just at that age when we knew a few things about ourselves - about who we were, how we were different from our guardians, from the people outside - but hadn't yet understood what any of it meant. I'm sure somewhere in your childhood, you too had an experience like ours that day; similar if not in the actual details, then inside, in the feelings. Because it doesn't really matter how well your guardians try to prepare you: all the talksvideos, discussions, warnings, none of that can really bring it home. Not when you're eight years old, and you're all together in a place like Hailsham; when you've got guardians like the ones we had; when the gardeners and the delivery men joke and laugh with you and call you "sweetheart."
All the same, some of it must go in somewhere. It must go in, because by the time a moment like that comes along, there's a part of you that's been waiting. Maybe from as early as when you're five or six, there's been a whisper going at the back of your head, saying: "One day, maybe not so long from now, you'll get to know how it feels." So you're waiting, even if you don't quite know it, waiting for the moment when you realise that you really are different to them; that there are people out there, like Madame, who don't hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you - of how you were brought into this world and why - and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly? ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

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

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