Top 450 Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Your lives are set out for you. You’ll become adults, then before you’re old, before you’re even middle-aged, you’ll start to donate your vital organs. That’s what each of you was created to do. You’re not like the actors you watch on your videos, you’re not even like me. You were brought into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all of them, have been decided.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

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

— Kazuo Ishiguro

303. “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

304. “People do have a political conscience of sorts here. They feel they ought to have strong feelings on this and that, just as Harry urges them to. But really, they’re no different from people anywhere. They want a quiet life. Harry has a lot of ideas about changes to this and that, but really, no one in the village wants upheaval, even if it might benefit them. People here want to be left alone to lead their quiet little lives. They don’t want to be bothered with this issue and that issue.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

305. “The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it’s a cold moment. It’s like walking past a mirror you’ve walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

306. “It’s just a bit of nostalgia to pass the time.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

307. “But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

308. “Miss Emily had an intellect you could slice logs with.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

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

— Kazuo Ishiguro

310. “I’d never before seen anything that gave, all at once, so many signals of anger and the wish to destroy. Its.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

311. “I now realized this woman was livid with anger. Not the sort that suddenly hits you then drains away. No. This woman, I could tell had been in a kind of white heat for sometime. It’s a sort of anger that arrives and then stays put at a constant level like a bad headache never quite peaking and refusing to find a proper outlet.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

312. “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

313. “The Sun, noticing there were so many children in the one place, was pouring in his nourishment through the wide windows of the Open Plan.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

314. “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

315. “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.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

316. “As we got older, we went on talking about the Gallery. If you wanted to praise someone’s work, you’d say: “That’s good enough for the Gallery.” And after we discovered irony, whenever we came across any laughably bad work, we’d go: “Oh yes! Straight to the Gallery with that one!”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

317. “So why had we stayed silent that day? I suppose it was because even at that age – we were nine or ten – we knew just enough to make us wary of that whole territory. It’s hard now to remember just how much we knew by then. We certainly knew – though not in any deep sense – that we were different from our guardians, and also from the normal people outside; we perhaps even knew that a long way down the line there were donations waiting for us.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

318. “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

319. “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

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

— Kazuo Ishiguro

321. “What made the tape so special for me was this one particular song: track number three, “Never Let Me Go.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

322. “Looking back now, it feels like we spent ages in that steamed-up kitchen after breakfast, or huddled around half-dead fires in the small hours, lost in conversation about our plans for the future.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

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

— Kazuo Ishiguro

324. “There was Ruth, lying on her side across my rug, peering at the spines of the cassettes in the low light, and then the Judy Bridgewater tape was in her hands.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

325. “So that feeling came again, even though I tried to keep it out: that we were doing all of this too late; that there’d once been a time for it, but we’d let that go by, and there was something ridiculous, reprehensible even, about the way we were now thinking and planning.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

326. “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

327. “Ruth had been right: Madame was afraid of us. But she was afraid of us in the same way someone might be afraid of spiders. We hadn’t been ready for that. It had never occurred to us to wonder how we would feel, being seen like that, being the spiders.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

328. “I must say, something about this small encounter had put me in very good spirits; the simple kindness I had been thanked for, and the simple kindness I had been offered in return, caused me somehow to feel exceedingly uplifted.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

329. “A wound that healed slowly, but heal it did.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

330. “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

331. “Continentals are unable to be butlers because they are as a breed incapable of the emotional restraint which only the English race is capable of. Continentals.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

332. “Because I don’t want you coming against your will. That wouldn’t be fair. I really want you to come, but if you said, Josie, I don’t want to, then I’d say to Mom, okay, we can’t have her, no way. But you do want to come, right?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

333. “What I’m saying is that we were all of us struggling to adjust to our new life, and I suppose we all did things back then we later regretted. I was really upset by Ruth’s remark at the time, but it’s pointless now trying to judge her or anyone else for the way they behaved during those early days at the Cottages.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

334. “I’m proud of you. A good son. I hope I’ve been a good father to you. I suppose I haven’t.’ ‘I’m afraid we’re extremely busy now, but we can talk again in the morning.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

335. “They conversed at such moments in a speech that was like a code, making me wonder if this was on account of my presence in the room, but I quickly understood it had simply to do with their familiarity with each other’s lives, and that there was no intention to exclude my understanding.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

336. “But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

337. “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

338. “What Axl and I feel today in our hearts for each other tells us the path taken here can hold no danger for us, no matter that the mist hides it now. It’s like a tale with a happy end, when even a child knows not to fear the twists and turns before. Axl and I would remember our life together, whatever its shape, for it’s been a thing dear to us.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

339. “The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services. What is the point in worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

340. “What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took? 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 in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

341. “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

342. “Yeah,” I said. “Gone to Norfolk.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

343. “She was the one always pretending to have finished anything anyone happened to be reading; and she was the only one with this notion that the way to demonstrate your superior reading was to go around telling people the plots of novels they were in the middle of.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

344. “We were always just too young to understand properly the latest piece of information. But of course we’d take it in at some level, so that before long all this stuff was there in our heads without us ever having examined it properly.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

345. “You see it in films sometimes, when one person’s pointing a gun at another person, and the one with the gun’s making the other one do all kinds of things. Then suddenly there’s a mistake, a tussle, and the gun’s with the second person. And the second person looks at the first person with a gleam, a kind of can’t-believe-my-luck expression that promises all kinds of vengeance.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

346. “Goodnight, Klara. Be as wonderful tomorrow as you were today.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

347. “I could see similar townhouses on the opposite side of the street. There were six of them in a row, and the front of each had been painted a slightly different colour, to prevent a resident climbing the wrong steps and entering a neighbour’s house by mistake.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

348. “Fences, what are they? Stage design. That’s the nice thing about England. Hedges give a sense of history properly set down in the land.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

349. “Once in a while – and I soon got better at watching those at the window while appearing to gaze at the RPO Building – a child would come to stare at us, and there would be a sadness there, or sometimes an anger, as though we’d done something wrong. A child like this could easily change the next moment and begin laughing or waving like the rest of them, but after our second day in the window, I learned quickly to tell the difference.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

350. “What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro