Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro is an English novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and moved to Britain in 1960 with his parents when he was five. (Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes)

“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
The Buried Giant

“A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions.
If one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is consolation – indeed, deep satisfaction – to be gained from his observation when looking back over one’s life.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“A part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and-no matter how much we despised ourselves for it-unable quite to let each other go.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“After all, there’s no turning back the clock now. One can’t be forever dwelling on what might have been. One should realize one has as good as most, perhaps better, and be grateful.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“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
The Remains of the Day

“An artist’s concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“And I could see the weariness in the boy AF’s walk, and wondered what it might be like to have found a home and yet to know that your child didn’t want you.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind of world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“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
Never Let Me Go

“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 thoroughly.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“As I say, these were helpful lessons for me. Not only had I learnt that changes were a part of Josie, and that I should be ready to accommodate them, I’d begun to understand also, that this wasn’t a trait peculiar just to Josie, that people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passersby – as they might in a store window, and that such display needn’t be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“As with a wound on one’s own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things”
Kazuo Ishiguro
A Pale View of Hills

“At the same time, what was becoming clear to me was the extent to which humans, in their wish to escape loneliness, made maneuvers that were very complex and hard to fathom, and I saw it was possible that the consequences of Morgan’s Falls had at no stage been within my control.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“At times it was almost as it had been years ago, when on a sunny day the family would sit there together exchanging relaxed, often vacuous talk.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“Be merciful and leave this place. Leave this country to rest in forgetfulness.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“Because maybe, in a way, we didn’t leave it behind nearly as much as we might once have thought. Because somewhere underneath, a part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and no matter how much we despised ourselves for it–unable quite to let each other go.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“Because you know how lousy it feels, people telling you how perfect things will be and they’re not being straight.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.” When We Were Orphans

“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
The Buried Giant

“But however hard I tried, I believe now there would have remained something beyond my reach.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“But such monsters were not cause for astonishment. People then would have regarded them as everyday hazards, and in those days there was so much else to worry about. How to get food out of the hard ground; how not to run out of firewood; how to stop the sickness that could kill a dozen pigs in a single day and produce green rashes on the cheeks of children.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“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
The Buried Giant

“But then suppose you stepped into one of those rooms,’ he said, ‘and discovered another room within it. And inside that room, another room still. Rooms within rooms within rooms. Isn’t that how it might be, trying to learn Josie’s heart? No matter how long you wandered through those rooms, wouldn’t there always be others you’d not yet entered?”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“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
The Remains of the Day

“But this small episode is as good an illustration as any of the hazards of uttering witticisms. By the very nature of a witticism, one is given very little time to assess its various possible repercussions before one is called to give voice to it, and one gravely risks uttering all manner of unsuitable things if one has not first acquired the necessary skill and experience.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“But to be frank, there’s much relief around the company. We feel now we can forget our past transgressions and look to the future. It was a great thing our President did.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“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 forever.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Nocturnes

“Chess is all about maintaining coherent strategies. It’s about not giving up when the enemy destroys one plan but to immediately come up with the next. A game isn’t won and lost at the point when the king is finally cornered. The game’s sealed when a player gives up having any strategy at all. When his soldiers are all scattered, they have no common cause, and they move one piece at a time, that’s when you’ve lost.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
A Pale View of Hills

“Democracy is a fine thing. But that doesn’t mean citizens have a right to run riot whenever they disagree with something.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“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
The Remains of the Day

“Don’t you wonder sometimes, what might have happened if you tried?”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“Even at the time, I realised this couldn’t be right, that this interpretation didn’t fit with the rest of the lyrics. But that wasn’t an issue with me. The song was about what I said, and I used to listen to it again and again, on my own, whenever I got the chance.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“Even so, an AF would feel himself growing lethargic after a few hours away from the Sun, and start to worry there was something wrong with him – that he had some fault unique to him and that if it became known, he’d never find a home.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“Even so, I believe there’s still hope. I believe help might come from a place the adults haven’t yet considered. But we need to do something now quickly.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“Even the solitude, I’ve actually grown to quite like… I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I’ll have only the roads, the big gray sky and my daydreams for company.” (Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes)
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“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.” When We Were Orphans

“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. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“For indeed, a man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if in the end he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“For their kind do not know what it is to risk everything in the endeavor to rise above the mediocre.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“How is it possible to hate so deeply for deeds not yet done?”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“How so much honorable is such a contest, in which one’s moral conduct and achievement are brought as witnesses rather than the size of one’s purse.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really – one has to ask oneself – what dignity is there in that?”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“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
The Remains of the Day

“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
Never Let Me Go

“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.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“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
The Unconsoled

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how it is with us. It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“I needed to get familiar with sex, and it would be just as well to practise first with a boy I didn’t care about too much. Then later on, if I was with someone special, I’d have more chance of doing everything right.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“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
Never Let Me Go

“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. Something in me just gave up.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“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.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“I suppose I do not on the whole greatly admire the ‘Tortoises’ of this world. While one may appreciate their plodding steadiness and ability to survive, one suspects their lack of frankness, their capacity for treachery. And I suppose, in the end, one despises their unwillingness to take chances in the name of ambition or for the sake of a principle they claim to believe in.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“I suppose they have a point though,’ he said. ‘I don’t belong here. This is a meeting for lifted kids.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“I think I hate Capaldi because deep down I suspect he may be right. That what he claims is true. That science has now proved beyond doubt there’s nothing so unique about my daughter, nothing there our modern tools can’t excavate, copy, transfer. That people have been living with one another all this time, centuries, loving and hating each other, and all on a mistaken premise. A kind of superstition we kept going while we didn’t know better.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they’d once belonged to the sea.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“I was wondering, princess. Could it be our love would never have grown so strong down the years had the mist not robbed us the way it did? Perhaps it allowed old wounds to heal.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“I wish him the very best. All I’m saying is that there are all kinds of ways to lead a successful life.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“I wish I could go out and walk and run and skateboard and swim in lakes. But I can’t because my mother has Courage. So instead I get to stay in bed and be sick. I’m glad about this. I really am.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“I’d begun to understand also that this wasn’t a trait peculiar just to Josie; that people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by – as they might in a store window – and that such a display needn’t be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“I’d remembered of course that I should be grateful as always, but hadn’t been able to keep the disappointment from my mind.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“I’ve come to appreciate cooking over the years. It’s an art, I’m convinced of it, just as noble as painting or poetry. It’s not appreciated simply because the product disappears so quickly.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
A Pale View of Hills

“If disappointments do come, you will carry on still. You will say, just as he does, I am so lucky.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Nocturnes

“If I’m alone at home, I get increasingly restless, bothered by the idea that I’m missing some crucial encounter out there somewhere. But if I’m left by myself in someone else’s place, I often find myself a nice sense of peace engulfing me. I love sinking into an unfamiliar sofa with whatever book happens to be lying nearby.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Nocturnes

“If one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is a consolation indeed, a deep satisfaction to be gained from this observation when looking back over one’s life.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“If some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that is in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“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
The Remains of the Day

“In any case, there is surely no great shame in mistakes made in the best of faith. It is surely a thing far more shameful go be unable or unwilling to acknowledge them.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“Indeed why should I not admit it? In that moment, my heart was breaking.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“It doesn’t matter how old someone is, it’s what they’ve experienced that counts. People can get to be a hundred and not experience a thing.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
A Pale View of Hills

“It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. If I’d known, maybe I’d have kept tighter hold of them, and not let unseen tides pull us apart.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“It was like there was some parallel universe we all vanished off to where we had all this sex.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“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
Never Let Me Go

“It would be the saddest thing to me, princess. To walk separately from you, when the ground will let us go as we always did.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“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
A Pale View of Hills

“It’s a great privilege, after all, to have been given a part to play, however small, on the world’s stage.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“It’s all right. I’m not upset. After all, they were just things. When you’ve lost your mother and your father, you can’t care so much about things, can you?” When We Were Orphans

“It’s nonsense to believe people go on loving each other regardless of what happens.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Unconsoled

“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 Quotes)
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“Josie just says what she thinks. Doesn’t care if she says the wrong thing. That gets irritating sometimes but I love her for it.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“Leave us, you were always on the outside of our love.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Unconsoled

“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
Never Let Me Go

“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers, and no doubt this applies to certain of the recollections I have gathered here.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
A Pale View of Hills

“My conscience, Sensei, tells me I cannot remain forever an artist of the floating world.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“My mother fell silent for some moments. Then she said: ‘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
An Artist of the Floating World

“Normal life is no longer possible for me. I’ve stepped off all the normal paths and am living in the bushes. I’m a bush woman now. I don’t feel like I can have the normal things.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Come Rain or Come Shine

“Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“Of course, it is tragic that so many of his generation died as they did, but why must he harbour such bitterness for his elders?”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“One should not, in any case, attempt to make a virtue out of one’s limitations.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Unconsoled

“One should realize one has as good as most, perhaps better, and be grateful.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“One thing I have witnessed is that public life can change people unrecognizably in a few short years.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“Our generation still carry the old feelings. A part of us refuses to let go. The part that wants to keep believing there’s something unreachable inside each of us. Something that’s unique and won’t transfer. But there’s nothing like that, we know that now. You know that. For people our age it’s a hard one to let go.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“Our life together’s like a tale with a happy end, no matter what turns it took in the way.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“People often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by – as they might in a store window – and that such a display needn’t be taken so seriously”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“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
The Remains of the Day

“Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won’t be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It’ll be because people have changed. They’ll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It’s healthy.” When We Were Orphans

“Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.” When We Were Orphans

“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
Nocturnes

“She might be a great person, but life’s so much bigger than just loving someone.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Nocturnes

“She wrote of how our childhood becomes like a foreign land once we have grown.” “Well, Colonel, it’s hardly a foreign land to me. In many ways, it’s where I’ve continued to live all my life. It’s only now I’ve started to make my journey from.” When We Were Orphans

“Silence is just as likely to indicate the most profound ideas forming, the deepest energies being summoned.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Unconsoled

“Sisters are supposed to be people you’re close to, aren’t they. You may not like them much, but you’re still close to them.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
A Pale View of Hills

“So I know just how much it matters to you that people who love one another are brought together, even after many years.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“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
The Buried Giant

“Something has changed in the character of the younger generation in a way I do not fully understand, and certain aspects of this change are undeniably disturbing.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“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
Never Let Me Go

“Sometimes,’ she said, ‘at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness. I’m glad you watch everything so carefully, Klara.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“That was one reason why we always thought so much about being in the window. Each of us had been promised our turn, and each of us longed for it to come.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“The best things, he always used to say, are put together of a night and vanish with the morning. What people call the floating world, Ono, was a world Gisaburo knew how to value.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

“The danger isn’t the river’s speed, friend, but its slowness.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“The game’s sealed when a player gives up having any strategy at all.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
A Pale View of Hills

“The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“The heart you speak of,’ I said. ‘It might indeed be the hardest part of Josie to learn. It might be like a house with many rooms. Even so, a devoted AF, given time, could walk through each of those rooms, studying them carefully in turn, until they became like her own home.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“The horror of that image has never diminished, but it has long ceased to be a morbid matter; as with a wound on one’s own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
A Pale View of Hills

“The Island was in the center of the kitchen, and perhaps to emphasize its fixed-down nature, had pale brown tiles that mimicked the bricks of a building.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“The Mother was wearing a coat – a thin, dark, high-ranking one – which moved with the wind around her body, so that for a moment she reminded me of the dark birds that perched on the high traffic signals even as the winds blew fiercely.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“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
The Remains of the Day

“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
Never Let Me Go

“The rest of my life stretches out as an emptiness before me.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“The smart kids think I have no shape. But I do. I’m just keeping it hidden. Because who wants them to see?”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“The Sun, noticing there were so many children in the one place, was pouring in his nourishment through the wide windows of the Open Plan.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“Then the Coffee Cup Lady reached the RPO Building side, and she and the man were holding each other so tightly they were like one large person, and the Sun, noticing, was pouring his nourishment on them.” (Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes)
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“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
An Artist of the Floating World

“There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one…”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro

“There was something very special, but it wasn’t inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“They accept that your decisions, your recommendations, are sound and dependable, almost always correct. But they don’t like not knowing how you arrive at them. That’s where it comes from, this backlash, this prejudice.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“They fought as though the most important thing was to damage each other as much as possible.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“This circle of hate is hardly broken, sir, but forged instead in iron by what’s done today.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“This country awakens so many memories, though each seems like some restless sparrow I know will flee any moment into the breeze.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“Today’s world is too foul a place for fine and noble instincts.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“Until recently, I didn’t think that humans could choose loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we’ve lived through, or feel we’ve had enough time.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“We may now understand better, too, why my father was so fond of the story of the butler who failed to panic on discovering a tiger under the dining table; it was because he knew instinctively that somewhere in this story lay the kernel of what true ‘dignity’ is.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“We were right for each other once. Whether we always will be, that’s anyone’s guess.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“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
An Artist of the Floating World

“What advantage does it bring a man to be so tall? For every high-dangling pear I reached there’s been an arrow threatened me would have flown over a smaller man!”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“What can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished? The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“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
Never Let Me Go

“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
Never Let Me Go

“What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“What is the point in worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that is in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took?”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“What occurs under the public gaze with so much pomp and ceremony is often the conclusion, or mere ratification, of what has taken place over weeks or months within the walls of such houses.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“What use is a god with boundless mercy, sir? You mock me as a pagan, yet the gods of my ancestors pronounce clearly their ways and punish severely when we break their laws. Your Christian god of mercy gives men licence to pursue their greed, their lust for land and blood, knowing a few prayers and a little penance will bring forgiveness and blessing.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“When it was too late for rescue, it was still early enough for revenge.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“When travelers speak of their most cherished memories, it’s impossible for them to disguise the truth. 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. Abiding love that has endured the years – that we see only rarely.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“When we lost something precious, and we’d looked and looked and still couldn’t find it, then we didn’t have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

“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
An Artist of the Floating World

“Who knows what will come when quick-tongued men make ancient grievances rhyme with fresh desire for land and conquest?”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“Yet are you so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“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
Never Let Me Go

“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
Never Let Me Go

“You’re always there, taking it all in. So you know as well as I do. The way she keeps getting at me. There’s no reason a person has to take all that. She pushes it too far, then thinks it can all be fixed with a nice picture. Send the AF over with it. Well she has to understand. Things aren’t always that easily fixed.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun

“You’ve got to enjoy yourself. The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it. That’s how I look at it. Ask anybody, they’ll all tell you. The evening’s the best part of the day.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

“You’ll figure it out! You get on your plane and I’ll get on mine. And we’ll see which one crashes!”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Nocturnes

“Your Christian god of mercy gives men license to pursue their greed, their lust for land and blood, knowing a few prayers and a little penance will bring forgiveness and blessing.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

“Your wound, your silly little wound! That’s your real love, Leo, that wound, the one true love of your life! I know how it will be, even if we tried, even if we managed to build something all over again. The music too, that would be no different. Even if they’d accepted you tonight, even if you became celebrated in this town, you’d destroy it all, you’d destroy everything, pull it all down around you just as you did before. And all because of that wound.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Unconsoled

“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.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go