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 ISHIGUROI 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.
More Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes
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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.
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The problem, as I see it, is that you’ve been told and not told. You’ve been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.
KAZUO ISHIGURO -
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 -
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 -
As with a wound on one’s own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things.
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Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.
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It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed.
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 -
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 -
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?
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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 -
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 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 -
What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint.
KAZUO ISHIGURO -
I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really – one has to ask oneself – what dignity is there in that?
KAZUO ISHIGURO