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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.

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
Never
Perfected
Heights
Height
Impression
Rise
Capable
Already
Doubt

More quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro

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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.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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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
Kazuo Ishiguro
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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
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When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence around a child, regulating it.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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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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We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.
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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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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Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in - particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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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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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
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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
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One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.
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.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.
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.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it's going to.
Kazuo Ishiguro
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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.
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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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