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 ISHIGUROLove 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.
More Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes
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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.
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We all live inside bodies that will deteriorate. But when you look at human beings, they’re capable of very decent things: love, loyalty. When time is running out, they don’t care about possessions or status. They want to put things right if they’ve done wrong.
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I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they’d once belonged to the sea.
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If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.
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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.
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I felt slightly superior to student politics, for instance. I had no reason to think this, but I thought of myself as slightly more seasoned. I became quite cynical talking to my student friends.
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All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.
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Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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The world is crawling with authors touring now. They’re like performance artists.
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There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.
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And if these incidents now seem full of significance and all of a piece, it’s probably because I’m looking at them in the light of what came later.
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I’ve always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.
KAZUO ISHIGURO