“ 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. ”
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“ 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. ”
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“ You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple? ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ 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 Norfolk after all, and it was only a couple of weeks since I’d lost him. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shoreline of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I halfclosed 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, maybe even call. 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 waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ 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- Copy
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“ 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. ”
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“ Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans? ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ That's most interesting. But I was no more a mindreader then than today. I was weeping for an altogether different reason. 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. 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. That is what I saw. It wasn't really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you and it broke my heart. And I've never forgotten. ”
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“ 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 neverending 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. ”
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“ There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one. ”
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“ It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
- 568
“ If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of. ”
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“ One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
- 1.5K
“ Nostalgic,’ 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.’ ‘Nostalgic. It is good to be nostalgic. Very important.’ ‘Really, old fellow?’ ‘Important. Very important. Nostalgic. When we nostalgic, we remember. A world better than this world we discover when we grow. We remember and wish good world come back again. So very important. Just now, I had dream. I was boy. Mother, Father, close to me. in our house.’ He fell silent and continued to gaze across the rubble. ‘Akira,’ I said, sensing that the longer this talk went on, the greater was some danger I did not wish fully to articulate. ‘We should move on. We have much to do. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ 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. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ I can see,’ Miss Emily said, ‘that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can certainly be looked at like that. But think of it. You were lucky pawns. There was a certain climate and now it’s gone. You have to accept that sometimes that’s how things happen in the 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.’ ‘It might be just some trend that came and went,’ I said. ‘But for us, it’s our life. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ إن المجرم الحديث قد أصبح أكثر مهارة ، أكثر طموحا ، وأكثر جرأة ، والعلم قد وضع نظاما كاملا من الأدوات المعقدة تحت تصرفه ”
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“ I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they'd once belonged to the sea. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they'd once belonged to the sea. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence around a child, regulating it. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ 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. ”
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“ All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence around a child, regulating it. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ I went many years without even associating Nagasaki with the atomic bomb. Then in the 1980s, when there was a new concern about CND and so on, Nagasaki took on this symbolic value. I felt my Nagasaki had been appropriated. It was suddenly this burning city of ashes… ”
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“ 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 values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ I don't think it's any fun, even if you are one of the most respected authors in the world like Margaret Atwood, to keep being nominated and not win. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ I don't think it's any fun, even if you are one of the most respected authors in the world like Margaret Atwood, to keep being nominated and not win. ”
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“ As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened. ”
- Kazuo Ishiguro- Copy
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“ When I got to 40 or so… I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on, and many that I had no control over whatsoever. ”
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