Quotes from Kazuo Ishiguro

I suppose I'm saying Josie and I will always be together at some level, some deeper one, even if we go out there and don't see each other any more.

And so we stood together like that, at the top of that field, for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us being swept away into the night.

but also, I thought, a little sadly. Rick returned the smile, and I wondered if they were exchanging secret messages just with their gazes.

Bütün bunlara kar?? ba????kl?k kazand???m? söylemiyorum, ama böyle yaÅŸamay? öÄŸrendim.

And yet what precisely is "greatness"? […] I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is though the land knows of its own beuty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.

How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? There was no going back.

So why had we stayed silent that day? I suppose it was because even at that age—we were nine or ten—we knew just enough to make us wary of that whole territory. It's hard now to remember just how much we knew by then. We certainly knew—though not in any deep sense—that we were different from our guardians, and also from the normal people outside; we perhaps even knew that a long way down the line there were donations waiting for us.

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.

Even so, I believe there's still hope. I believe help might come from a place the adults haven't yet considered. But we need to do something now quickly.

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 I think 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.

For a long time, I was very unhappy, very unhappy indeed. ... occasions now and then -- extremely desolate occasions -- when you think to yourself: What a terrible mistake I've made with my life. And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life you might have had.

What made the tape so special for me was this one particular song: track number three, "Never Let Me Go.

Miss Emily had an intellect you could slice logs with.

I remember Laura was demonstrating to me an especially disgusting way of blowing your nose for when you really wanted to put off a boy.

For it is, in practice, simply not possible to adopt such a critical attitude towards an employer and at the same time provide good service.

Then suddenly, with the skeleton in an obscene heap on the desktop, she turned away and began telling us how we had to be careful who we had sex with. Not just because of the diseases, but because, she said, "sex affects emotions in ways you'd never expect." We had to be extremely careful about having sex in the outside world, especially with people who weren't students, because out there sex meant all sorts of things.

Goodnight, Klara. Be as wonderful tomorrow as you were today.

And the reason it meant so much—so much more than, say, dancing or table-tennis—was because the people out there were different from us students: they could have babies from sex.

Tendréis que reconocer que a veces, es así como funcionan las cosas en este mundo. Las opiniones de la gente, sus sentimientos, un día van en una dirección y otro día en otra

Miss Emily's lecture that day was typical of what I'm talking about. We'd be focusing on sex, and then the other stuff would creep in. I suppose that was all part of how we came to be "told and not told.

In any case, ogres were not so bad provided one did not provoke them. One had to accept that every so often, perhaps following some obscure dispute in their ranks, a creature would come blundering into a village in a terrible rage, and despite shouts and brandishings of weapons, rampage about injuring anyone slow to move out of its path. Or that every so often, an ogre might carry off a child into the mist. The people of the day had to be philosophical about such outrages.

It must be great. Not to miss things. Not to long to get back to something. Not to be looking back all the time.

You believe in the human heart? I don't mean simply the organ, obviously. I'm speaking in a poetic sense. The human heart. Do you think there is such a thing? Something that makes each of us special and individual?

They conversed at such moments in a speech that was like a code, making me wonder if this was on account of my presence in the room, but I quickly understood it had simply to do with their familiarity with each other's lives, and that there was no intention to exclude my understanding.