110+ Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes On Writing, Dreamlike And Emotive

Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, and An Artist of the Floating World. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017 for his works that "uncover the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world". Following is our collection on famous quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro on writing, love, dreamlike.

Top 10 Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

1. There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.
2. Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.
3. She always wanted to believe in things.
4. Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers.
5. As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.
6. 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.
7. What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.
8. If you go to Tokyo, I think it becomes very obvious that there's this almost seamless mixture of popular culture and Japanese traditional culture.
9. I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I’m having this one.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint.
• Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways.
• Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.
• Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time, it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki.
• If you look at my last songs and first short stories, there is a real connection between them.
• All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.
• To see the best before I have properly begun would be somewhat premature.
• Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?
• An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.
• It was like there was some parallel universe we all vanished off to where we had all this sex.

Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes About Writing

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

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

What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer's life with the writing. I think that's something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public now. — Kazuo Ishiguro

There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it's going to. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I like the fact that by mimicking the way memory works, a writer can actually write in a fluid way - one solid scene doesn't have to fall on another solid scene, you can just have a fragment that then dovetails into another one that took place 30 years apart from it. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes About Love

Love isn't about when you first meet. It's about the many, many years you spend together, when you're trying to keep that flame burning. — Kazuo Ishiguro

She might be a great person, but life's so much bigger than just loving someone. — Kazuo Ishiguro

You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple? — Kazuo Ishiguro

If you were a boy and a girl and you were in love with each other, really, properly in love, and if you could show it, then the people who run Hailsham, they sorted it out for you. They sorted it out so you could have a few years together before you began your donations. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes About People

I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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 grew up at a certain point in this process. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

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

Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I had been plunged into a different world. I found myself spending half my time answering weird questions on book tours in the Midwest. People would stand up and explain to me the situation in their office and ask me whether they should resign or not. — Kazuo Ishiguro

My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

I do feel part of that generation of people who were rather idealistic in the '70s and became disillusioned in the '80s. Not just about social services issues, but the world. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I think it's quite difficult to understand what kind of life a writer leads. They might be millionaires, or they might be starving people. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes About Writer

I think there is a huge difference between writers who have very big sales, and writers who have small sales. Even writers with very high reputations, even Nobel prize winners, often sell in very low figures. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I find Japanese books quite baffling when I read them in translation. It's only with Haruki Murakami that I find Japanse fiction that I can understand and relate to. He's a very international writer. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The Booker triumph of Graham Swift's moving, effortlessly profound Last Orders is a vindication of the quiet, much-misunderstood path this fine writer chose to take after the brilliance of Waterland more than ten years ago. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes About World

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

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

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

The world is crawling with authors touring now. They're like performance artists. — Kazuo Ishiguro

All you decent, well-meaning gentlemen, let me ask you, have you any idea what sort of place the world is becoming all around you? The days when you could act out of your noble instincts are over. Except of course, you here in Europe don't yet seem to know it. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes About Family

I'm very fortunate in that I don't have money problems. I have lunch with my wife at home. I don't have to commute, so I have much more time with my family. — Kazuo Ishiguro

People were incredibly kind to our family and went out of their way to help. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Our family arrived in England in 1960. At that time I thought the war was ancient history. But if I think of 15 years ago from now, that's 1990, and that seems like yesterday to me. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes About Life

It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust. — Kazuo Ishiguro

You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Your life must now run the course that's been set for it. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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. — Kazuo Ishiguro

There is certainly a satisfaction and dignity to be gained in coming to terms with the mistakes one has made in the course of one’s life — Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro Famous Quotes And Sayings

You're always in a rush, or else you're too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Even the solitude, I've actually grown to quite like... I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I'll have only the roads, the big gray sky and my daydreams for company. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It didn't hurt, did it? When I hit you?" "Sure. Fractured skull. Concussion, the lot..." "But seriously, Kath. No hard feelings, right? I'm awfully sorry. I honestly am. — Kazuo Ishiguro

There's still a part of me that thinks I have to write a really good novel. I'm not trying to say I'm not happy with the novels I've written in the past. But it always feels to me like there's another one that I have to write that will really say what I want to say, and really paint this world that I can see hazily in my head. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Typically in my novels the narrator tells a story by remembering, and the memories are colored by this and colored by that. So the whole universe of the novel tends to be framed by the narrator's memories and thoughts. — Kazuo Ishiguro

As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought throughly. — Kazuo Ishiguro

There was a time you saw me once, one afternoon, in the dormitories. There was no one else around, and I was playing this tape, this music. I was sort of dancing with my eyes closed and you saw me.' '...yes, I remember that occasion. I still think about it from time to time.' 'That's funny, so do I. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. — Kazuo Ishiguro

When a man induces his wife to turn suspicious thoughts against her own father, then that is surely cause enough for resentment. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

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? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment. — Kazuo Ishiguro

We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The book was at a reasonably high position on the New York Times... before I was in the country. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if my presence here would push it up or down. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I quizzed him a lot on this point and i suspect the truth was that it was like a lot of things at that age: you don't have any clear reason, you just do it. You do it because you think it might get a laugh, or because you want to see if it'll cause a stir. And when you're asked to explain afterwards, it doesn't seem to make any sense. — Kazuo Ishiguro

When I was younger, I didn't read that much. I was more interested in film and music. Now I'm curious. I want to know what it's all about. — Kazuo Ishiguro

If I'm alone at home, I get increasingly restless, bothered by the idea that I'm missing some crucial encounter out there somewhere. But if I'm left by myself in someone else's place, I often find myself a nice sense of peace engulfing me. I love sinking into an unfamiliar sofa with whatever book happens to be lying nearby. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Its was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It was like being given a maths problem when your brain's exhausted, and you know there's some far-off solution, but you can't work up the energy even to give it a go. Something in me just gave up. — Kazuo Ishiguro

One need hardly dwell on the catastrophic possibility of uttering a bantering remark only to discover it wholly inappropriate — Kazuo Ishiguro

The English landscape at its finest - such as I saw this morning - possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess. It is, I believe, a quality that will mark out the English landscape to any objective observer as the most deeply satisfying in the world, and this quality is probably best summed up by the term 'greatness.' — Kazuo Ishiguro

And what made these heart-to-hearts possible--you might even say what made the whole friendship possible during that time--was this understanding we had that anything we told each other during these moments would be treated with careful respect: that we'd honor confidences, and that no matter how much we rowed, we wouldn't use against each other anything we'd talked about during those sessions. — Kazuo Ishiguro

So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy — Kazuo Ishiguro

What do you think dignity's all about?' The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public. — Kazuo Ishiguro

What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood. He knew he was close to completing and so that's what he was doing: getting me to describe things to him, so they'd really sink in, so that maybe during those sleepless nights, with the drugs and the paint and the exhaustion, the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The reason I wouldn't dare to write a Western is simply because that seems to be so much a part of American culture. Maybe if I want to write a Western enough I should try to overcome that fear, but I'll certainly feel like I'm trespassing. I feel that that is so much a part of American foundation myth, it's part of the myth of America, the American vision of what America is, which people have glorified and then challenged and then vilified. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I grew up in Britain before it became a multicultural place, so in many ways I have a nostalgia for an England that's vanished - the England of my childhood has actually disappeared. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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. That's how 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. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

As with a wound on one's own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things — Kazuo Ishiguro

Every country should have a strong literary tradition of its own at the center, but it should also have an interest in other countries. — Kazuo Ishiguro

…It’s hard to appreciate the beauty of a world when one doubts its very validity….But I’ve long since lost all such doubts, Ono,’ he continued. ‘When I am an old man, when I look back over my life and see I have devoted it to the task of capturing the unique beauty of that world, I believe I will be well satisfied. And no man will make me believe I’ve wasted my time. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Don’t you wonder sometimes, what might have happened if you tried? — Kazuo Ishiguro

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. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I cannot start a story or chapter without knowing how it ends. ... Of course, it rarely ends that way. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

But I really wanted to find it for you. And when it looked in the end like it wasn't going to turn up, I just said to myself, one day I'll go to Norfolk and I'll find it there for her.' 'The lost corner of England,' I said. — Kazuo Ishiguro

He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lorship's wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that? — Kazuo Ishiguro

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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 from being swept away into the night. — Kazuo Ishiguro

My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It is all very well, in these changing times, to adapt one's work to take in duties not traditionally within one's realm; but bantering is of another dimension altogether. For one thing, how would one know for sure that at any given moment a response of the bantering sort is truly what is expected? One need hardly dwell on the catastrophic possibility of uttering a bantering remark only to discover it wholly inappropriate. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Throughout my career I've struggled to encourage people to read my books on a more metaphorical level. I'm less attached to my settings than, for example, Saul Bellow. The setting of a novel for me is just a part of the technique. I choose it at the end. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I try to always go for something... very interior, following thoughts and memories, something that I think is difficult to do on the screen, which is essentially a third-person medium. — Kazuo Ishiguro

A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions (...) if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is consolation - indeed, deep satisfaction - to be gained from his observation when looking back over one's life. #Page no.134 — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

What I wished more than anything was that the thing hadn't happened at all, and I thought that by not mentioning it I'd be doing everyone else a favor. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I couldn't speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British, and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I'm regarded as one of their own in Japan. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Even at the time, I realised this couldn't be right, that this interpretation didn't fit with the rest of the lyrics. But that wasn't an issue with me. The song was about what I said, and I used to listen to it again and again, on my own, whenever I got the chance. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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

Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm. — Kazuo Ishiguro

One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event. — Kazuo Ishiguro

You could say I'd rewritten the same novel three times and I thought I had to move on. The success of the book, and then the movie, had by then also created a commercial expectation and I remember touring America and seeing people in the audiences who I thought might not want to read the books I wanted to write next. My constituency had become broader, but more mysterious to me. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Maybe all of us at Hailsam had little secrets like that -- little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone without fears and longing. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Life Lessons by Kazuo Ishiguro

1. Kazuo Ishiguro's work emphasizes the importance of understanding the complexities of human relationships and the power of memory in shaping our lives.
2. His stories often explore themes of regret, loss, and the consequences of our choices.
3. Through his work, Ishiguro encourages us to reflect on our own lives and consider how our past experiences shape our present and future.