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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
Ever
Gains
Might
Blame
Turned
Quite
Forever
Looking
Blaming
Lives
Wished
Back
Gain

More quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro

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I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.
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What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer's life with the writing. I think that's something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public now.
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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.
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So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy
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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.
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I couldn't speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I'm regarded as one of their own in Japan.
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I work very regular hours, roughly 9 to 5:30. I think I have it much easier than a lot of parents. I just sit at home, I have a very flexible timetable, and I'm very fortunate in that I don't have money problems. I have lunch with my wife at home. I don't have to commute, so I have much more time with my family.
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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 quizzed him a lot on this point and i suspect the truth was that it was like a lot of things at that age: you don't have any clear reason, you just do it. You do it because you think it might get a laugh, or because you want to see if it'll cause a stir. And when you're asked to explain afterwards, it doesn't seem to make any sense.
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I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.
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If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.
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I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.
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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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It was like there was some parallel universe we all vanished off to where we had all this sex.
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It didn't hurt, did it? When I hit you? Sure. Fractured skull. Concussion, the lot... But seriously, Kath. No hard feelings, right? I'm awfully sorry. I honestly am.
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Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways.
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I took one glance at her in that hospital bed under the dull light and recognised the look on her face, which I'd seen on donors often enough before. It was like she was willing her eyes to see right inside herself, so she could patrol and marshal all the better the separate areas of pain in her body.
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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.
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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
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Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.
Kazuo Ishiguro