Quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro

About Kazuo Ishiguro:

Kazuo Ishiguro is a British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan; his family moved to England in 1960 when he was five. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor's degree from the University of Kent in 1978 and his Master's from the University of East Anglia's creative-writing course in 1980.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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...

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 ...

Kazuo Ishiguro

Nos-tal-gic,’ Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for ‘nostalgic.’ ‘Nos-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Very important.’ ‘Really, old fellow?’...

Kazuo Ishiguro

It's all right. I'm not upset. After all, they were just . When you've lost your mother and your father, you can't care so much about , can you?

Kazuo Ishiguro

I'm not at all interested in the brave who fight against the odds and win. I am interested in those who accept their lot, as that is what many people in the world are doing. They do their best in ghastly conditions.

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 w...

Kazuo Ishiguro

An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.

Kazuo Ishiguro

For a great many people, the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day. 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...

Kazuo Ishiguro

What is more, sir," his lordship went on, "I believe I have a good idea of what you mean by 'professionalism.' It appears to mean getting one's way by cheating and manipulating. It appears to mean serving the dictates of greed and advantage rather th...

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

But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points'...

Kazuo Ishiguro

Naturally—and why should I not admit this—I have occasionally wondered to myself how things might have turned out in the long run.... I only speculate this now because in the light of subsequent events, it could well be argued that in making my d...

Kazuo Ishiguro

In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognise such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious momen...

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 t...

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...

Kazuo Ishiguro

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

Kazuo Ishiguro

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

Kazuo Ishiguro

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

Kazuo Ishiguro

All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.

Kazuo Ishiguro

I want my words to survive translation. I know when I write a book now I will have to go and spend three days being intensely interrogated by journalists in Denmark or wherever. That fact, I believe, informs the way I write - with those Danish journa...

Kazuo Ishiguro

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory. I like the atmospheres that result if episodes are narrated through the haze of memory.

Kazuo Ishiguro

Author Bio

  • NameKazuo Ishiguro
  • Descriptionauthor from the United Kingdom
  • BornNovember 8, 1954
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionNovelist; Writer
  • AwardsMan Booker Prize; Costa Book Awards; Officer Of The Order Of The British Empire