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And I’m a Hailsham student – which is enough by itself sometimes to get people’s backs up.

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

Book Different People Quite Stand Value Winner
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
Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Change Myself Natural Old Way
I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they’d once belonged to the sea.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Book Myself Old Page Sea Thinking
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.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Friendship Myself Politics Quite Reason Student Talk Thinking
Don’t you wonder sometimes, what might have happened if you tried?
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Inspirational Motivational Time Wonderful 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
I’ve always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Fiction Greatness Interest Myself
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

Life Mistake Oneself Satisfaction
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

Author Fun Myself Nomination Respect Thinking
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

Brilliant Effort Move Quiet Understand
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
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
What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that’s been given to them, and find some dignity.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Acceptance Dignity Interest Myself People
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.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Beautiful Calm Feeling Greatness Land
She always wanted to believe in things.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Believe Herself Inspirational

And I’m a Hailsham student – which is enough by itself sometimes to get people’s backs up.

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And I’m a Hailsham student – which is enough by itself sometimes to get people’s backs up.

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Popular Authors

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