Kazuo Ishiguro

Its 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.

Maybe 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.

Revolution? Really, Ono! The communists want a revolution. We want nothing of the sort. Quite the opposite, in fact. We wish for a restoration.

An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.

What I mean is, right from that first time, there wassomething in Tommy's manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed tosay: __es, we're doing this now and I'm glad we're doing it now. But what apity we left it so late.

Democracy is a fine thing. But that doesn't mean citizens have a right to run riot whenever they disagree with something.#Page: 120

You'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.

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.

The 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.

You 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__. 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__ have her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered. Look at you both now! I__ so proud to see you both. You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn__ be who you are today if we__ not protected you. You wouldn__ have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn__ 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.

A 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.134

What do you think dignity's all about?'The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public.

when we were eleven, say, we really weren't interested in each other's poems at all. . . . But we didn't know a thing about poetry. We didn't care about it.

What is more, sir," his lordship went on, "I believe I have a good idea of what you mean by 'professionalism.' It appears to mean getting one's way by cheating and manipulating. It appears to mean serving the dictates of greed and advantage rather than those of goodness and the desire to see justice prevail in the world. If that is the 'professionalism' you refer to, sir, I don't care much for it and have no wish to acquire it.

People are not two-thirds one thing and the remainder something else. Temperament, personality, or outlook don__ divide quite like that. The bits don__ separate clearly. You end up a funny homogeneous mixture. This is something that will become more common in the latter part of the century__eople with mixed cultural backgrounds, and mixed racial backgrounds. That__ the way the world is going.

Maybe from as early as when you're five or six, there's been a whisper going at the back of your head, saying: __ne day, maybe not so long from now, you'll get to know how it feels._ So you're waiting, even if you don't quite know it, waiting for the moment when you realise that you really are different to them; that there are people out there, like Madame, who don't hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you _ of how you were brought into this world and why _ and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs. The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it's a cold moment. It's like walking past a mirror you've walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange.

You need to remember that. If you__e to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.

As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought throughly.