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" My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Like
Friends
Generation
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" I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Interesting
Who
Other
" Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time, it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Back
Time
Now
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Family
Work
Wife
" There'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
Wisdom
Child
Childhood
" I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Like
Stories
Started
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Think
Cinema
Play
" I want my words to survive translation. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Survive
Want
Words
" I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to write something strange and difficult, that was the time. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Time
Thought
Strange
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Control
Back
My Life
" The book was at a reasonably high position on the New York Times... before I was in the country. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if my presence here would push it up or down. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
New York
Book
Interesting
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Like
Writing
Result
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Speak
Own
Me
" I 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
Loved
Cowboy
Famous
" We all live inside bodies that will deteriorate. But when you look at human beings, they're capable of very decent things: love, loyalty. When time is running out, they don't care about possessions or status. They want to put things right if they've done wrong. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Live
Loyalty
Love
" I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
English
Always
Had
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Promotion
Writing
Think
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Music
Curious
Film
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Always
Think
Try
" What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that's been given to them, and find some dignity. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
People
Accept
Dignity
" 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
Run
Place
World
" There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Life
Am
Had
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Life
My Life
Back
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Wife
Time
Money
" I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Imagination
World
Me
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Reason
Politics
Myself
" Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Dreams
Travel
Friends
" Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Deepest
World
Work
" 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. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Memory
People
See
" I think jogging is bad for your health. All that pressure on the knees and back cannot be good for you. "
Kazuo Ishiguro
Pressure
Health
Good
" 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
Think
Through
Writer