Quotes by 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...”

“That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was...”

“Nos-tal-gic, Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for nostalgic. Nos-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Ver...”

“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...”

“Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?”

“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, ...”

“There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.”

“It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed.”

“If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.”

“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 thes...”

“One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.”

“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, Puff...”

“Where once we fought for land and God, we now fought to avenge fallen comrades, themselves slaughtered in vengeance. Where could it end? Babes growing to men knowing only days of war.”

“The stranger thought it might be God himself had forgotten much from our pasts, events far distant, events of the same day. And if a thing is not in Gods mind, then what chance of it remaining in t...”

“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. ...”

“When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world....”

“I suppose it had something to do with it being a secret, just how much it had meant to me. Maybe all of us at Hailsham had little secrets like that--little private nooks created out of thin air whe...”

“All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else ...”

“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...”

“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 ...”