Vintage Books & Anchor Books

” ‘Play for me. Play me something you played at your recital.’ She had indicated a polished upright chair carefully placed in the centre of the room, so he sat down on it and unpacked his cello. Rather disconcertingly, she sat herself in front of one of the big windows so that he could see her almost exactly in profile, and she continued to stare into the space before her… . Her posture didn’t alter as he began to play, and when he came to the end of his first piece, she didn’t say a word. So he moved quickly to another piece, and then another. A half-hour went by then a whole hour.”

―Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes

“I 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. That’s how it is with us. It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.”

—Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“As with a wound on one’s own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, A Pale View of Hills

“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?”
—Kazuo Ishiguro

“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.”
—Kazuo Ishiguro