Top 33 Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

My wife is the most savage critic. She doesn’t feel intimidated by my reputation. As far as she‘s concerned, she’s just criticising a boyfriend who‘d recently had a go at fiction. She can tell me to abandon whole novels.

When I write a novel, I want it to be completely different from a screenplay. I’m very conscious of the difference, and I want novels to work purely as novels. Otherwise I don’t see how they’ll survive – why don’t we just all go to the movies or watch television.

We always like to keep our children in a kind of bubble and censor the bad news about the world. We like to tell them the world is full of benevolent, nice people.

I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on.

When I was younger, I didn’t read that much. I was more interested in film and music. Now I’m curious. I want to know what it’s all about.

I do feel part of that generation of people who were rather idealistic in the ’70s and became disillusioned in the ’80s. Not just about social services issues, but the world.

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

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

I like the fact that by mimicking the way memory works, a writer can actually write in a fluid way – one solid scene doesn’t have to fall on another solid scene, you can just have a fragment that then dovetails into another one that took place 30 years apart from it.

The world is crawling with authors touring now. They’re like performance artists.

I’m always trying to make something that is impossible to film. Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can’t and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody’s head.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

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.

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.

There comes a point when you can more or less count the number of books you’re going to write before you die.

People were incredibly kind to our family and went out of their way to help.

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.

I felt slightly superior to student politics, for instance. I had no reason to think this, but I thought of myself as slightly more seasoned. I became quite cynical talking to my student friends.

I try to always go for something… very interior, following thoughts and memories, something that I think is difficult to do on the screen, which is essentially a third-person medium.

There’s a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer’s head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it’s going to.

If you look at my last songs and first short stories, there is a real connection between them.

I want my words to survive translation.

When you’re lucky enough to have a good film made of your novel – and ‘Never Let Me Go’ is, believe me, a heartbreakingly good film indeed – you get wonderfully talented individuals each focusing on their special area.

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.

I couldn’t speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British, and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I’m regarded as one of their own in Japan.

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

When I got to 40 or so… I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on, and many that I had no control over whatsoever.

To some extent, at least, you have to shield children from what you know and drip-feed information to them. Sometimes that is kindly meant, and sometimes not.

There are things I am more interested in than the clone thing. How are they trying to find their place in the world and make sense of their lives? To what extent can they transcend their fate? As time starts to run out, what are the things that really matter?

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.

I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff.

There’s something very misleading about the literary culture that looks at writers in their 30s and calls them ‘budding‘ or ‘promising‘, when in fact they’re peaking.

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.