In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

I needed to get familiar with sex, and it would be just as well to practice first with a boy I didn't care about too much. Then later on, if I was with someone special, I'd have more chance of doing everything right.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

I suppose it had something to do with it being a secret, just how much it had meant to me. Maybe all of us at Hail sham had little secrets like that--little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone with our fears and longings. But the very fact that we had such needs would have felt wrong to us at the time--like somehow we were letting the side down.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

I think genre rules should be porous, if not nonexistent.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they'd once belonged to the sea.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

It might be just some trend that came and went,' I said. 'But for us, it's our life.

— 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.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

It was a fine feeling indeed to be standing up there like that, with the sound of summer all around one and a light breeze on one's face. And I believe it was then, looking on that view, that I began for the first time to adopt a frame of mind appropriate for the journey before me. For it was then that I felt the first healthy flush of anticipation for the many interesting experiences I know these days ahead hold in store for me.

— Kazuo Ishiguro

It was like there was some parallel universe we all vanished off to where we had all this sex.

— Kazuo Ishiguro