01c. 1954 ADA man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions(...)if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is consolation - indeed, deep satisfaction - to be gained from his observation when looking back over one's life.#Page no.134Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
02c. 1954 ADYou see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have been Hailsham if we hadn’t. Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you, I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods. Lucy was well-meaning enough. But if she’d have her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered. Look at you both now! I’m so proud to see you both. You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn’t be who you are today if we’d not protected you. You wouldn’t have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn’t have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you? So she had to go.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
03c. 1954 ADThe earlier years - the ones I've just been telling you about - they tend to blur into each other as a kind of golden time, and when I think about them at all, even the not-so-great things, I can't help feeling a sort of glow.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
04c. 1954 ADSometimes 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.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
05c. 1954 ADYou're always in a rush, or else you're too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
06c. 1954 ADDemocracy is a fine thing. But that doesn't mean citizens have a right to run riot whenever they disagree with something.#Page: 120Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
07c. 1954 ADWhat I mean is, right from that first time, there wassomething in Tommy's manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed tosay: “Yes, we're doing this now and I'm glad we're doing it now. But what apity we left it so late.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
09c. 1954 ADRevolution? Really, Ono! The communists want a revolution. We want nothing of the sort. Quite the opposite, in fact. We wish for a restoration.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
10c. 1954 ADMaybe all of us at Hailsam had little secrets like that -- little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone without fears and longing.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
11c. 1954 ADIts was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
12c. 1954 ADWhen it was too late for rescue, it was still early enough for revenge.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
13c. 1954 ADWhen my own time comes, will I too long for the sea? I think I will be content enough with the soil. And I will not demand the exact spot, but let it be within this country Horace and I have spent the years roaming contentedly.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
14c. 1954 ADI keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
15c. 1954 ADWhen 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 the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
16c. 1954 ADHow so much honourable is such a contest, in which one's moral conduct and achievement are brought as witnesses rather than the size of one's purse.#Page: 10Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
17c. 1954 ADIt might be just some trend that came and went,' I said. 'But for us, it's our life.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
18c. 1954 ADOur life together's like a tale with a happy end, no matter what turns it took in the way.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
19c. 1954 ADI do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
20c. 1954 ADWe may now understand better, too, why my father was so fond of the story of the butler who failed to panic on discovering a tiger under the dining table; it was because he knew instinctively that somewhere in this story lay the kernel of what true ‘dignity’ is.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
21c. 1954 ADI 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 / quote ↗
22c. 1954 ADWhen 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 / quote ↗
23c. 1954 ADI discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me.Kazuo Ishiguro / quote ↗
24c. 1954 ADThere'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 / quote ↗
