Top 450 Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “I can’t speak for her. But once I’m out there, I know I’ll always keep searching for someone just like her. At least like the Josie I once knew. So it wasn’t ever a deception, Klara.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

402. “For the likes of yourself, it’s always been easy to exert your influence. You can count the most powerful in the land as your friends. But the likes of us here, sir, we can go year in year out and never even lay eyes on a real gentleman.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

403. “But you play that passage like it’s the -memory- of love. You’re so young, yet you know desertion, abandonment. That’s why you play that third movement the way you do. Most cellists, they play it with joy. But for you, it’s not about joy, it’s about the memory of a joyful time that’s gone for ever.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

404. “She’s no dream woman I keep telling you, princess. Everyone here knew her a month ago and had a good word for her. What can it be makes everyone, yourself included, forget she ever lived?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

405. “This is why I find it so hard to be civil around people like Capaldi. When they do what they do, say what they say, it feels like they’re taking from me what I hold most precious in this life.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

406. “When I look back to this period, and remember it was less than twenty years from the end of a world war in which the Japanese had been their bitter enemies, I’m amazed by the openness and instinctive generosity with which our family was accepted by this ordinary English community.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

407. “Keiko, unlike Niki, was pure Japanese, and more than one newspaper was quick to pick up on this fact. The English are fond of their idea that our race has an instinct for suicide, as if further explanations are unnecessary; for that was all they reported, that she was Japanese and that she had hung herself in her room.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

408. “The English are fond of their idea that our race has an instinct for suicide, as if further explanations are unnecessary; for that was all they reported, that she was Japanese and that she had hung herself in her room.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

409. “It is important to learn how to fail, to learn how to be wrong in a way that minimizes pain to you and others and maximizes what you can learn from the experience.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

410. “Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa 1984 by George Orwell A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki The Overstory by Richard Powers The Farm by Joanne Ramos The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

411. “But to be frank, there’s much relief around the company. We feel now we can forget our past transgressions and look to the future. It was a great thing our President did.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

412. “We’re going to be leaving here soon. It’s not like a game any more. We’ve got to think carefully.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

413. “Do you mean, Manager, that they lost each other?’ She was quiet for another moment. ‘Yes,’ she said, eventually. ‘That must be it. They lost each other. And perhaps just now, just by chance, they found each other again.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

414. “It’s hard to put the whole world to rights, but let us at least think about how we can prepare our own small corner of it, this corner of ‘literature’, where we read, write, publish, recommend, denounce and give awards to books. If we are to play an important role in this uncertain future, if we are to get the best from the writers of today and tomorrow, I believe we must become more diverse. I mean this in two particular senses.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

415. “What was important to us, as Ruth said one evening when we were sitting in that tiled room in Dover, looking out at the sunset, was that “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 around the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

416. “When I say I wish she’d found out the whole score, it’s more because I feel sad at the idea of her finishing up different from me and Tommy. The way it is, it’s like there’s a line with us on one side and Ruth on the other, and when all’s said and done, I feel sad about that, and I think she would too if she could see it.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

417. “He was looking at me in complete innocence and I didn’t know what to say. A part of me wanted badly to tell him what was going on, and I suppose I knew that to do anything else would be to betray the trust we’d built up since the moment I’d reminded him about his polo shirt. And for me to strap up his arm in a splint would have meant my becoming one of the main perpetrators of the joke.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

418. “Then she continued to walk away.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

419. “For I suppose there’s some would hear my words and think our love flawed and broken. But God will know the slow tread of an old couple’s love for each other, and understand how black shadows make part of its whole.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

420. “Firstly, we must widen our common literary world to include many more voices from beyond our comfort zones of the elite first-world cultures.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

421. “You’re much the senior in years, Master Axl, but in matters of blood, it may be I’m the elder and you the youth. I’ve seen dark hatred as bottomless as the sea on the faces of old women and tender children, and some days felt such hatred myself.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

422. “The Giant, once buried, now stirs.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

423. “A friend of mine’s just had a baby,” Niki said. “She’s really pleased. I can’t think why. Horrible screaming thing she’s produced.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

424. “Look here, Stevens, the first of the delegates will be arriving here in less than a fortnight.’ ‘We are well prepared, sir.’ ‘What happens within this house after that may have considerable repercussions.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘I mean considerable repercussions. On the whole course Europe is taking. In view of the persons who will be present, I do not think I exaggerate.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

425. “I was upset. But I’m not any more. You have to look forward in life.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

426. “But I can see him studying his newspaper, breaking off regularly to look up at the passers-by on the pavement outside. From the way he does this, I had thought at first that he was waiting for a companion, but it would seem he wishes merely to greet acquaintances as they pass by.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

427. “Hello, Josie.’ Rick, looking up at us, had on a cautious smile. ‘I heard this rumour we might be friends again.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

428. “How could written fiction hope to survive against the might of cinema and television if it didn’t offer something unique, something the other forms couldn’t do?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

429. “The most painful wounds are not the ones inflicted by others, but the ones we inflict on ourselves. They are the wounds of regret, of guilt, of knowing that we have failed to live up to our own ideals. These wounds fester in the darkness, hidden from the world, but they bleed us dry, sapping our strength, our will to go on. And as we carry these wounds with us, we begin to realize that they will never heal, that we are destined to suffer in silence, prisoners of our own making.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

430. “The Island was in the center of the kitchen, and perhaps to emphasize its fixed-down nature, had pale brown tiles that mimicked the bricks of a building.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

431. “And having recently been in much the same position, it was easy to recognise the signs of her looking around for some opportunity to do something nice, something really special for me. It was a good feeling, and I remember even thinking once or twice how it would be better if she didn’t get a chance for ages, just so the good feeling between us could go on and on.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

432. “The game’s sealed when a player gives up having any strategy at all.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

433. “The other cars had to pass noisily around us, but there was no anti-parking sign. Through the windshield, we could see another under-bridge area in front of us, and the cars that passed us were forming a line to enter it.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

434. “For they found they became oddly uncomfortable whenever the topic was broached, and before long an understanding had grown between them, in the silent way understandings do between a husband and wife of many years, to avoid the subject as much as possible. I say “as much as possible,” for there appeared at times to be a need – a compulsion, you might say – to which one or the other would have to yield.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

435. “For it was then that I felt the first healthy flush of anticipation, for the many interesting experiences I know these days ahead hold in store for me.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

436. “People who love one another are brought together, even after many years.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

437. “Ask anybody, they’ll all tell you. The evening’s the best part of the day.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

438. “You notice and absorb so much.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

439. “If you can’t find someone with whom you truly wish to share this experience, then don’t!”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

440. “It’s wrong that a man can’t get to see around his own country. Take my advice, get out of the house for a few days.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

441. “The grass was tall in all three fields, and when the wind blew, it would move as if invisible passers-by were hurrying through it.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

442. “Up to a point, no doubt, there is some truth in what he says: in a country such as ours, people may indeed have a certain duty to think about great affairs and form their opinions.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

443. “The war, ghastly as it was, represented no more than “an awkward window in Man’s evolution” when for a few years our technical progress had run ahead of our organisational capacities.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

444. “Mr Capaldi pensava che dentro Josie non ci fosse niente di tanto speciale da non poter esser proseguito. Diceva alla Madre che aveva cercato dappertutto e non l’aveva mai trovato. Ma adesso credo che non cercasse nel posto giusto. C’era invece qualcosa di molto speciale, ma non era dentro Josie. Era dentro quelli che l’amavano.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

445. “This gave us both a little chill, and though we giggled, we didn’t say any more about it.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

446. “Car engines were.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

447. “People can get to be a hundred and not experience a thing.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

448. “Though you must understand, it’s still work in progress. And it’s not always easy for a layperson to understand the way these things slowly take shape.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

449. “You see, because it’s stuck out here on the east, on this hump jutting into the sea, it’s not on the way to anywhere. People going north and south’ – she moved the pointer up and down – ’they bypass it altogether. For that reason, it’s a peaceful corner of England, rather nice. But it’s also something of a lost corner.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

450. “We were just trying to create a place for ourselves in a world that didn’t want us... We didn’t have to be the same as them, but we wanted to be part of their world.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro