black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

There comes a point when you can more or less count the number of books you’re going to write before you die.

Kazuo Ishiguro

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

Disaster Fingers Mistake Move Yourself
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

Difference Reputation Thinking Winner Writing
As with a wound on one’s own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Body Development Disturb Intimacy Possible Wound
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

Art Evidence Reveal Soul Yourself
There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Dreams Life Myself Spiritual
I cannot start a story or chapter without knowing how it ends. Of course, it rarely ends that way.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

End Myself Rare Start Way
To see the best before I have properly begun would be somewhat premature.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Best Myself Proper See
I want my words to survive translation.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Myself Survive Translation Word
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

Fear Leaving Ourselves Philosophy Quite Stay
She always wanted to believe in things.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Believe Herself Inspirational
You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple?
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Love Simplicity Yourself
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

Beginning Myself Search See Start
I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can’t and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel you can get right inside somebody’s head.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Fiction Head Movie Novel Thinking Yourself
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

Frame Memories Myself Novel Remember Thinking Universe
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

Company Expectation Myself Time
Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Break Heart Moments Myself

There comes a point when you can more or less count the number of books you’re going to write before you die.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

There comes a point when you can more or less count the number of books you’re going to write before you die.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes