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Quotes About Reflection

My conscience, Sensei, tells me I cannot remain forever an artist of the floating world.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
All right, so neither of us are exactly in our first flush of youth, but you've got to keep looking forward.' And I believe it was then that he said: 'You've got to enjoy yourself. The evening's the best part of the day. You've done your day's work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it. That's how I look at it. Ask anybody, they'll all tell you. The evening's the best part of the day.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
It was his reaction when I mention I was from Hailsham. He'd just come through his third donation, it hadn't gone well, and he must have known he wan't going to make it. He could hardly breathe, but he looked towards me and said: Hailsham. I bet that was a beautiful place.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
Don't keep looking back all the time, you're bound to get depressed. And all right, you can't do your job as well as you used to. But it's the same for all of us, see? We've all got to put our feet up at some point... you've got to keep looking forward.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
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
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.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
Resolved not to waste further time on account of this childish affair, I contemplated departure via the french windows.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
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?
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
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
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
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.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
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.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
yourself wondering
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
It might be just some trend that came and went," I said. "But for us, it's our life.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
So that feeling came again, even though I tried to keep it out: that we were doing all of this too late; that there'd once been a time for it, but we'd let that go by, and there was something ridiculous, reprehensible eve, about the way we were now thinking and planning.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
If we'd understood that back then-who knows?-maybe we'd have kept a tighter hold of one another.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
In any case, there is surely no great shame in mistakes made in the best of faith. It is surely a thing far more shameful go be unable or unwilling to acknowledge them.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
But tell me, Taro, don't you worry at times we might be a little too hasty in following the Americans? I would be the first to agree many of the old ways must now be erased for ever, but don't you think sometimes some good things are being thrown out with the bad? Indeed, sometimes Japan has come to look like a small child learning from a strange adult.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one's life took?
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
Like you were sad, maybe. And a bit scared.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
So that feeling came again, even though I tried to keep it out: that we were doing all of this too late; that there'd once been a time for it, but we'd let that go by, and there was something ridiculous, reprehensible even, about the way we were now thinking and planning.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
Of course, it is tragic that so many of his generation died as they did, but why must he harbour such bitterness for his elders?
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
I could put down a scene from two days ago right beside one from twenty years earlier, and ask the reader to ponder the relationship between the two. Often the narrator himself would not need to know fully the deeper reasons for a particular juxtaposition. I could see a way of writing that could properly suggest the many layers of self-deception and denial that shrouded any person's view of their own self and past.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
Bir gün, belki de çok yak?nda, nas?l olduÄŸunu hissetmeye baÅŸlayacaks?n.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro
Belki de hiçbirimiz yaÅŸad?klar?m?z? tam olarak anlam?yor ve yeterli zaman?m?z kal?p kalmad???n? hissedemiyoruz.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro