Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

140 quotes in 2163 categories

• I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are…
• I cannot start a story or chapter without knowing how it ends. ... Of course, it rarely ends that way.
• You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple?
• It is all very well, in these changing times, to adapt one's work to take in duties not traditionally within one's realm; but bantering is…
• 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…
• 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…
• I still have a suspicion of charity and think the state has a role to play in many areas. And although for most of the…
• I couldn't speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me…
• 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…
• I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I’m having…
• Don’t you wonder sometimes, what might have happened if you tried?
• I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to…
• 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…
• To see the best before I have properly begun would be somewhat premature.
• The English landscape at its finest - such as I saw this morning - possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more…
• Our family arrived in England in 1960. At that time I thought the war was ancient history. But if I think of 15 years ago…
• The fantasy never got beyond that—I didn’t let it—and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out of control. I just…
• So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy
• I think the judging process is full of integrity, compared to some other prizes around the world. The fact that they change the panel of…
• People aren't quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They're not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary…

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