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 ISHIGUROMany 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.
More Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes
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Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers.
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People were incredibly kind to our family and went out of their way to help.
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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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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.
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I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me.
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Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.
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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.
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Don’t you wonder sometimes, what might have happened if you tried?
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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.
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Love 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.
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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.
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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.
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I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.
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I cannot start a story or chapter without knowing how it ends. Of course, it rarely ends that way.
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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.
KAZUO ISHIGURO