Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro OBE, FRSA, FRSLis a British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan; his family moved to England in 1960 when he was five. Ishiguro obtained his bachelor's degree from the University of Kent in 1978 and his Master's from the University of East Anglia's creative-writing course in 1980...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth8 November 1954
CountryJapan
people forever advice
For a great many people, the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day. Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day. 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?
eye thinking dancing
There was a time you saw me once, one afternoon, in the dormitories. There was no one else around, and I was playing this tape, this music. I was sort of dancing with my eyes closed and you saw me.' '...yes, I remember that occasion. I still think about it from time to time.' 'That's funny, so do I.
letting-go world might
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.
love-is thinking simple
You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple?
moving sleep soon-enough
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.
should-have feelings might
I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I’m having this one.
teacher children parent
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.
long-ago years perspective
As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought throughly.
feet evening done
The evening's the best part of the day. You've done your day's work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.
carpe-diem people different
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.
decision mess
When I got to 40 or so... I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on, and many that I had no control over whatsoever.
writing past thinking
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.
mistake dignity made
I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?
life mistake moving
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.