Quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro

I wouldn't want to try to adapt something of my own. It would be like going back to school and doing all my exams again.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

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

Love

I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

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

Education

Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Success

I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

I think jogging is bad for your health. All that pressure on the knees and back cannot be good for you.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

I want my words to survive translation. I know when I write a book now I will have to go and spend three days being intensely interrogated by journalists in Denmark or wherever. That fact, I believe, informs the way I write - with those Danish journalists leaning over my shoulder.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

There's something peculiar about writing fiction. It requires an interesting balance between seeing the world as a child and having the wisdom of a middle-aged person. The further you get from childhood and the experience of the teenage years, the greater the danger of losing that wellspring.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Life

What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer's life with the writing. I think that's something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public now.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Life

I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Life

All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

When I see films made from books, I make a huge effort not to remember the book. It's important to see the film as a film.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Success

Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time, it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

I want my words to survive translation.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that's been given to them, and find some dignity.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

I loved cowboy films and TV series, and I learned bits of English from them. My favorite was 'Laramie', with Robert Fuller and John Smith. I used to watch 'The Lone Ranger', which had been famous in Japan as well. I idolized these cowboys.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Education

I work very regular hours, roughly 9 to 5:30. I think I have it much easier than a lot of parents. I just sit at home, I have a very flexible timetable, and I'm very fortunate in that I don't have money problems. I have lunch with my wife at home. I don't have to commute, so I have much more time with my family.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Success

I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to write something strange and difficult, that was the time.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory. I like the atmospheres that result if episodes are narrated through the haze of memory.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Wisdom

Even though I spent the first five years of my life in Nagasaki, going to Japan can be really difficult. Even if they know I've been brought up in the West, they still expect me to understand all the subtleties of their culture, and if I get it wrong, it matters much more than if a British person gets it wrong. I find it intimidating.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Life

I don't hang out with the glitteringly successful people; I hang out with people who've been friends for many years, and to some extent I feel my worldly success is a bit uncomfortable for them.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

Success