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