Don’t you wonder sometimes, what might have happened if you tried? Kazuo Ishiguro More Quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro More Quotes From Kazuo Ishiguro I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that? Kazuo Ishiguro dignity made mistake As with a wound on one's own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things Kazuo Ishiguro disturbing intimacy body 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 letting-go might world 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 parent teacher children 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 race fear people 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 hindsight benefits past I want my words to survive translation. Kazuo Ishiguro translations want There are things I am more interested in than the clone thing. How are they trying to find their place in the world and make sense of their lives? To what extent can they transcend their fate? As time starts to run out, what are the things that really matter? Kazuo Ishiguro fate house running I cannot start a story or chapter without knowing how it ends. ... Of course, it rarely ends that way. Kazuo Ishiguro crafts knowing stories It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven, could unravel and separate over a thing like that. But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task. If we'd understood that back then-who knows?-maybe we'd have kept a tighter hold of one another. Kazuo Ishiguro tugging powerful love Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking. Kazuo Ishiguro moments should heart All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma. Kazuo Ishiguro trauma growing-up children I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel you can get right inside somebody's head. Kazuo Ishiguro play fiction thinking There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable. Kazuo Ishiguro incidents dream forever 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 people way 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 enough-time carpe-diem people 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 write something strange and difficult, that was the time. Kazuo Ishiguro ivory writing people 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. Kazuo Ishiguro writing song thinking I don't really like to work with literary allusions very much. I never want to be in a position where I'm saying, "You've got to read a lot of other stuff" or "You've got to have had a good education in literature to fully appreciate what I'm doing." Kazuo Ishiguro good-education appreciate literature I actually dislike, more than many people, working through literary allusion. I just feel that there's something a bit snobbish or elitist about that. I don't like it as a reader, when I'm reading something. It's not just the elitism of it; it jolts me out of the mode in which I'm reading. I've immersed myself in the world and then when the light goes on I'm supposed to be making some kind of literary comparison to another text. I find I'm pulled out of my kind of fictional world, I'm asked to use my brain in a different kind of way. I don't like that. Kazuo Ishiguro reading brain people
