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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

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Kazuo Ishiguro
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: November 8
Author
Lyricist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Writer
Ishiguro Kazuo
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro
Back
Gain
Ever
Gains
Might
Blame
Turned
Quite
Forever
Looking
Blaming
Lives
Wished

More quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Throughout my career I've struggled to encourage people to read my books on a more metaphorical level. I'm less attached to my settings than, for example, Saul Bellow. The setting of a novel for me is just a part of the technique. I choose it at the end.
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What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.
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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
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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.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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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
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I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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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.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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I wouldn't want to try to adapt something of my own. It would be like going back to school and doing all my exams again.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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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
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I cannot start a story or chapter without knowing how it ends. ... Of course, it rarely ends that way.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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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
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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
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I had been plunged into a different world. I found myself spending half my time answering weird questions on book tours in the Midwest. People would stand up and explain to me the situation in their office and ask me whether they should resign or not.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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I don't have a deep link with England like, say, Jonathan Coe or Hanif Kureishi might demonstrate. For me it is like a mythical place.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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I realised, of course, that other people used these roads but that night, it seemed to me these dark byways of the country existed just for the likes of us, while the big glittering motorways with their huge signs and super cafes were for everyone else.
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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
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She might be a great person, but life's so much bigger than just loving someone.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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It was like there was some parallel universe we all vanished off to where we had all this sex.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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If you go to Tokyo, I think it becomes very obvious that there's this almost seamless mixture of popular culture and Japanese traditional culture.
Kazuo Ishiguro