Quotes from Kazuo Ishiguro

It must be nice sometimes to have no feelings. I envy you.' I considered this, then said: 'I believe I have many feelings. The more I observe, the more feelings become available to me.' She laughed unexpectedly, making me start. 'In that case,' she said, 'maybe you shouldn't be so keen to observe.

when travellers speak of their most cherished memories, it's impossible for them to disguise the truth. A couple may claim to be bonded by love, but we boatmen may see instead resentment, anger, even hatred. Or a great barrenness. Sometimes a fear of loneliness and nothing more. Abiding love that has endured the years – that we see only rarely.

I thought sooner or later someone would start saying it had gone too far, but it just kept on, and no one said anything. I

Kids can be hurtful sometimes. They believe if you happen to be an adult, nothing can possibly hurt you.

For we were, as I say, an idealistic generation for whom the question was not simply one of how well one practised one's skills, but to what end one did so; each of us harboured the desire to make our own small contribution to the creation of a better world

Küçük bir k?z gördüm, eski iyi yürekli dünyay? göÄŸsüne yaslam??, art?k kalamayaca??n? yüreÄŸinde hissettiÄŸi bu dünyay? tutuyor, onu asla b?rakmas?n istiyordu.

Our life together's like a tale with a happy end, no matter what turns it took in the way.

Resolved not to waste further time on account of this childish affair, I contemplated departure via the french windows.

The smart kids think I have no shape. But I do. I'm just keeping it hidden. Because who wants them to see?

Josie just says what she thinks. Doesn't care if she says the wrong thing. That gets irritating sometimes but I love her for it.

Everything suddenly felt perfect: an hour set aside, stretching ahead of us, and there wasn't a better way to spend it. I had to really hold myself back from giggling stupidly, or jumping up and down on the pavement like a little kid.

Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?

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 you will no doubt agree that the very best staff plans are those which give clear margins of error to allow for those days when an employee is ill or for one reason or another below par.

In the morning when the Sun returns. It's possible for us to hope.

Then Tommy said: "So there's definitely nothing. No deferral, nothing like that." "Tommy," I murmured, and glared at him. But Miss Emily said gently: "No, Tommy. There's nothing like that. Your life must now run the course that's been set for it.

You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in this world. People's opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grow up at a certain point in the process.

And one has a right, perhaps, to feel a satisfaction those content to serve mediocre employers will never know – the satisfaction of being able to say with some reason that one's efforts, in however modest a way, comprise a contribution to the course of history.

I'd begun to understand also that this wasn't a trait peculiar just to Josie; that people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by – as they might in a store window – and that such a display needn't be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.

Maybe Ruth thought we'd be spending hours talking about my future; maybe she thought she'd have a big influence on whether or not I changed my mind.But I kept a certain distance from her, just as I did from Tommy. We didn't really talk properly again at the Cottages, and before I knew it, I was saying my goodbyes

Can it be, husband, you still fear the mist's fading, never mind the promise I made you?

The earlier years - the ones I've just been telling you about - they tend to blur into each other as a kind of golden time, and when I think about them at all, even the not-so-great things, I can't help feeling a sort of glow.

Then of course I found it. I'd been flicking through a row of cassette cases, my mind on other things, when suddenly there it was, under my fingers, looking just the way it had all those years ago: Judy, her cigarette, the coquettish look for the barman, the blurred palms in the background.

yourself wondering