Top 450 Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “But there is no virtue at all in clinging as some do to tradition merely for its own sake.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

252. “But they did eventually set off, with walking sticks and bundles on their backs, on a bright morning of wispy white clouds and a strong breeze.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

253. “And it was clear the Sun was unwilling to make any promise about Josie, because for all his kindness, he wasn’t yet able to see Josie separately from the other humans, some of whom had angered him very much on account of their Pollution and inconsideration, and I suddenly felt foolish to have come to this place to make such a request.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

254. “Then let me ask you something else. Let me ask you this. Do you believe in the human heart? I don’t mean simply the organ, obviously. I’m speaking in the poetic sense. The human heart. Do you think there is such a thing? Something that makes each of us special and individual? And if we just suppose that there is. Then don’t you think, in order to truly learn Josie, you’d have to learn not just her mannerisms but what’s deeply inside her? Wouldn’t you have to learn her heart?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

255. “Year after year goes by, and nothing gets better. All we do is argue and debate and procrastinate. Any decent idea is amended to ineffectuality by the time it’s gone half-way through the various committees it’s obliged to pass through. The few people qualified to know what’s what are talked to a standstill by ignorant people all around them.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

256. “Josie and I really loved each other, that was the truth at the time. No one can claim you misled or tricked them. But now we’re no longer kids, we have to wish each other the best and go our different ways. It couldn’t have worked out, me going to college, trying to compete with all those lifted kids. I’ve got my own plans now, and that’s how it should be. But that was no lie, Klara. And in a funny way, it still isn’t a lie now.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

257. “At times it was almost as it had been years ago, when on a sunny day the family would sit there together exchanging relaxed, often vacuous talk.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

258. “But tell me, Taro, don’t you worry at times we might be a little too hasty in following the Americans? I would be the first to agree many of the old ways must now be erased for ever, but don’t you think sometimes some good things are being thrown out with the bad? Indeed, sometimes Japan has come to look like a small child learning from a strange adult.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

259. “But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

260. “And I could see the weariness in the boy AF’s walk, and wondered what it might be like to have found a home and yet to know that your child didn’t want you. Until I saw this pair it hadn’t occurred to me that an AF could be with a child who despised him and wanted him gone, and that they could nevertheless carry on together.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

261. “It is essential, then, to keep one’s attention focused on the present; to guard against any complacency creeping in on account of what one may have achieved in the past.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

262. “When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old, kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

263. “A mother’s love for her son. Such a noble thing, to override the dread of loneliness.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

264. “And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind of world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

265. “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.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

266. “Maybe none of us really understand what we’ve lived through, or feel we’ve had enough time.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

267. “It’s a great privilege, after all, to have been given a part to play, however small, on the world’s stage.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

268. “When we lost something precious, and we’d looked and looked and still couldn’t find it, then we didn’t have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

269. “Manager, I did all I could to learn Josie and had it become necessary, I would have done my utmost. But I don’t think it would have worked out so well. Not because I wouldn’t have achieved accuracy. But however hard I tried, I believe now there would have remained something beyond my reach. The Mother, Rick, Melania Housekeeper, the Father. I’d never have reached what they felt for Josie in their hearts. I’m now sure of this, Manager?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

270. “Yes. Until recently, I didn’t think that humans could choose loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

271. “For it is, in practice, simply not possible to adopt such a critical attitude towards an employer and at the same time provide good service.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

272. “My mother fell silent for some moments. Then she said: ‘When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you get older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

273. “Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that is in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

274. “It was that exchange, when we finally mentioned the closing of Hailsham, that suddenly brought us close again, and we hugged, quite spontaneously, not so much to comfort one another, but as a way of affirming Hailsham, the fact that it was still there in both our memories. Then I had to hurry off to my own car.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

275. “Your Christian god of mercy gives men licence to pursue their greed, their lust for land and blood, knowing a few prayers and a little penance will bring forgiveness and blessing.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

276. “The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

277. “I’m surprised someone would desire so much a path that would leave her in loneliness. Until recently, I didn’t think that humans could choose loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

278. “They fear loneliness and that’s why they behave as they do. Perhaps Josie too.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

279. “I suppose I’m saying Josie and I will always be together at some level, some deeper one, even if we go out there and don’t see each other any more. I can’t speak for her. But once I’m out there, I know I’ll always keep searching for someone just like her.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

280. “In bantering lies the key to human warmth.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

281. “I tried to imagine me and Rosa getting so angry with each other we would start to fight like that, actually trying to damage each other’s bodies. The idea seemed ridiculous, but I’d seen the taxi drivers, so I tried to find the beginnings of such a feeling in my mind. It was useless, though, and I’d always end up laughing at my own thoughts.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

282. “All I know is that I’ve wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I’d get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don’t want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow’s sky.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

283. “I’m sure, sir, there are all kinds of ethical issues. But in the end, it’s for legislators to decide how these things get regulated, not people like me. For now, I just want to learn as much as I can, so I can take my understanding to the next level.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

284. “One of the boys asked if the fences around the camps had been electrified, and then someone else had said how strange it must have been, living in a place like that, where you could commit suicide any time you liked just by touching a fence.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

285. “He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted! All those years, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really -one has to ask- what dignity is there in that?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

286. “Why was I so hostile to Moira B. that day when she was, really, a natural ally? What it was, I suppose, is that Moira was suggesting she and I cross some line together, and I wasn’t prepared for that yet.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

287. “There is, after all, a real limit to how much ordinary people can learn and know, and to demand that each and every one of them contribute ‘strong opinions’ to the great debates of the nation cannot, surely, be wise. It is, in any case, absurd that anyone should presume to define a person’s ‘dignity’ in these terms.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

288. “One can’t be forever dwelling on what might have been.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

289. “By then, of course, we all knew something I hadn’t known back then, which was that none of us could have babies.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

290. “I believe I have many feelings. The more I observe, the more feelings become available to me.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

291. “In the meantime, my father’s condition had grown neither better nor worse. As I understood, he was asleep for much of the time, and indeed, I found him so on the few occasions I had a spare moment to ascend to that little attic room. I did not then have a chance actually to converse with him until that second evening after the return of his illness.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

292. “What do you think she’d have said if we’d asked her? ‘Excuse me, but do you think your friend was ever a clone model?’ She’d have thrown us out. We know it, so we might as well just say it. If you want to look for possibles, if you want to do it properly, then you look in the gutter. You look in rubbish bins. Look down the toilet, that’s where you’ll find where we all came from.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

293. “It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

294. “Do you believe in the human heart? Do you think there is such a thing? Something that makes each of us special and unique? And if we just suppose that there is. Then don’t you think, in order to truly learn Josie, you’d have to learn not just her mannerisms but what’s deeply inside her? Wouldn’t you have to learn her heart?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

295. “So you’re waiting, even if you don’t quite know it, waiting for the moment when you realise that you really are different to them; that there are people out there, like Madame, who don’t hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you – of how you were brought into this world and why – and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

296. “Miss Emily went on shaking her head. ‘It was never true. Even before the Morningdale scandal, even back when Hailsham was considered a shining beacon, an example of how we might move to a more humane and better way of doing things, even then, it wasn’t true. It’s best to be clear about this. A wishful rumour. That’s all it ever was. Oh dear, is that the men come for the cabinet?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

297. “Maybe all of us at Hailsham had little secrets like that – little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone with our fears and longings. But the very fact that we had such needs would have felt wrong to us at the time – like somehow we were letting the side down.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

298. “So for a long time you were kept in the shadows, and people did their best not to think about you. And if they did, they tried to convince themselves you weren’t really like us. That you were less than human, so it didn’t matter.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

299. “How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? There was no going back.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

300. “Why, Mr Stevens, why, why, why do you always have to pretend?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro