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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 healthy.

Kazuo Ishiguro

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?
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Blame Forever Live Ourselves Quite
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
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
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
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
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
I want my words to survive translation.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Myself Survive Translation Word
I think it’s quite difficult to understand what kind of life a writer leads. They might be millionaires, or they might be starving people.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Difficult Life Myself People Quite Starve Thinking
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
Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Memories Memory Quite Writing
She always wanted to believe in things.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Believe Herself Inspirational
Even at the time, I realised this couldn’t be right, that this interpretation didn’t fit with the rest of the lyrics. But that wasn’t an issue with me. The song was about what I said, and I used to listen to it again and again, on my own, whenever I got the chance.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Chance Issues Lyrics Myself Right Time
It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Achievement Day Easy Enjoyment Hard Work Knowledge Yourself
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

Break Conversation Move Proper Sleep Talk Travel
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.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Best Day Enjoyment Work Yourself
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

Book Count Death Writing Yourself
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
You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Live Need Oneself Remember Yourself
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
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

Goodness Happiness Head Myself Novel Thinking World Writing
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
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
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.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Light Myself Pieces See
I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I’m having this one.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Feeling Life Myself Person
Its was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one’s development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one’s ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Ability Challenge Development Judgement Limitation Oneself
Even the solitude, I’ve actually grown to quite like. I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I’ll have only the roads, the big gray sky and my daydreams for company.
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Company Feeling Growth Myself Road Solitude
Don’t you wonder sometimes, what might have happened if you tried?
KAZUO ISHIGURO

Inspirational Motivational Time Wonderful Yourself

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 healthy.

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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 healthy.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes