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It was like being given a maths problem when your brain's exhausted, and you know there's some far-off solution, but you can't work up the energy even to give it a go. Something in me just gave up.

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
Giving
Math
Even
Solutions
Work
Gave
Something
Brain
Like
Energy
Given
Maths
Give
Exhausted
Problem
Solution

More quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro

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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.
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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 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.
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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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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.
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I want my words to survive translation.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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And so we stood together like that, at the top of that field for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us from being swept away into the night.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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Your life must now run the course that's been set for it.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?
Kazuo Ishiguro
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I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.
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.
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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 cannot start a story or chapter without knowing how it ends. ... Of course, it rarely ends that way.
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.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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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
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I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, and maybe even call.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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When I was younger, I didn't read that much. I was more interested in film and music. Now I'm curious. I want to know what it's all about.
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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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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
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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.
Kazuo Ishiguro