451 Quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro

And what made these heart-to-hearts possible – you might even say what made the whole friendship possible during that time – was this understanding we had that anything we told each other during these moments would be treated with careful respect: that we’d honor confidences, and that no matter how much we rowed, we wouldn’t use against each other anything we’d talked about during those sessions.

Rather, debates are conducted, and crucial decisions arrived at, in the privacy and calm of the great houses of this country. What occurs under the public gaze with so much pomp and ceremony is often the conclusion, or mere ratification, of what has taken place over weeks or months within the walls of such houses.

We may pray to different gods, yet surely yours will bless this dragon as does mine.” Wistan.

Be merciful and leave this place. Leave this country to rest in forgetfulness.

Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it’s a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.

And yet what precisely is this ‘greatness’? Just where, or in what, does it lie? I am quite aware it would take a far wiser head than mine to answer such a question, but if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.

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.

Yet are you so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?

I remember a huge tiredness coming over me, a kind of lethargy in the face of the tangled mess before me. It was like being given a maths problem when your brain’s exhausted, and you know there’s some far-off solution, but you can’t work up the energy even to give it a go.