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" My wife is the most savage critic. She doesn't feel intimidated by my reputation. As far as she's concerned, she's just criticising a boyfriend who'd recently had a go at fiction. She can tell me to abandon whole novels. "

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" 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 wouldn't want to try to adapt something of my own. It would be like going back to school and doing all my exams again. "

" Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time, it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki. "

" 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. "

" There's something very misleading about the literary culture that looks at writers in their 30s and calls them 'budding' or 'promising', when in fact they're peaking. "

" When you're lucky enough to have a good film made of your novel - and 'Never Let Me Go' is, believe me, a heartbreakingly good film indeed - you get wonderfully talented individuals each focusing on their special area. "

Kazuo Ishiguro

Believe

You

" When I see films made from books, I make a huge effort not to remember the book. It's important to see the film as a film. "

" People aren't quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They're not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different. "

" 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. "

" When 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. "

" 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

Dignity

" 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. "

" All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma. "

" 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. "

" The world is crawling with authors touring now. They're like performance artists. "

" 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. "

" I don't have a deep link with England like, say, Jonathan Coe or Hanif Kureishi might demonstrate. For me, it is like a mythical place. "

Kazuo Ishiguro

Place

" There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it's going to. "

" There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one. "

Kazuo Ishiguro

Life

Had

" To some extent, at least, you have to shield children from what you know and drip-feed information to them. Sometimes that is kindly meant, and sometimes not. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I don't hang out with the glitteringly successful people; I hang out with people who've been friends for many years, and to some extent I feel my worldly success is a bit uncomfortable for them. "

" If you look at my last songs and first short stories, there is a real connection between them. "

" Even though I spent the first five years of my life in Nagasaki, going to Japan can be really difficult. Even if they know I've been brought up in the West, they still expect me to understand all the subtleties of their culture, and if I get it wrong, it matters much more than if a British person gets it wrong. I find it intimidating. "

" I had been plunged into a different world. I found myself spending half my time answering weird questions on book tours in the Midwest. People would stand up and explain to me the situation in their office and ask me whether they should resign or not. "

" This is the big question that we all have about our children: How much, how soon, do we tell our children the less comfortable facts about the world they're going to inherit? "

" 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

Writing

Result

" 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. "