Quotes from A Pale View of Hills

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

“Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers, and no doubt this applies to certain of the recollections I have gathered here. ”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from A Pale View of Hills

“it would have been so stupid, Niki went on, If you would just accepted everything the way it was and just stayed where you were. At least you made an effort.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from A Pale View of Hills

“A friend of mine’s just had a baby,” Niki said. “She’s really pleased. I can’t think why. Horrible screaming thing she’s produced.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from A Pale View of Hills

“The horror of that image has never diminished, but it has long ceased to be a morbid matter; as with a wound on one's own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from A Pale View of Hills

“Keiko, unlike Niki, was pure Japanese, and more than one newspaper was quick to pick up on this fact. The English are fond of their idea that our race has an instinct for suicide, as if further explanations are unnecessary; for that was all they reported, that she was Japanese and that she had hung herself in her room.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from A Pale View of Hills

“The game's sealed when a player gives up having any strategy at all.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from A Pale View of Hills

“About him and his wife voting for different parties. A few years ago that would have been unthinkable.” “No doubt.” “Quite extraordinary the things that happen now. But that’s what’s meant by democracy, I suppose.” Ogata-San gave a sigh. “These things we’ve learnt so eagerly from the Americans, they aren’t always to the good.” “No, indeed they’re not.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from A Pale View of Hills

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Popular quotes

“So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What joy!”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from The Death of Ivan Ilyich

“Evidence is the debris of a careless mind.”
― Brian Farrey, quote from The Vengekeep Prophecies

“Now he was…dust. To an outside observer, these ten seconds had been ground up into ten thousand uncorrelated moments and scattered throughout real time - and in model time, the outside world had suffered an equivalent fate. Yet the pattern of his awareness remained perfectly intact: somehow he found himself, “assembled himself” from these scrambled fragments. He’d been taken apart like a jigsaw puzzle - but his dissection and shuffling were transparent to him. Somehow - on their own terms - the pieces remained connected.

Imagine a universe entirely without structure, without shape, without connections. A cloud of microscopic events, like fragments of space-time … except that there is no space or time. What characterizes one point in space, for one instant? Just the values of the fundamental particle fields, just a handful of numbers. Now, take away all notions of position, arrangement, order, and what’s left? A cloud of random numbers.

But if the pattern that is me could pick itself out from all the other events taking place on this planet, why shouldn’t the pattern we think of as ‘the universe’ assemble itself, find itself, in exactly the same way? If I can piece together my own coherent space and time from data scattered so widely that it might as well be part of some giant cloud of random numbers, then what makes you think that you’re not doing the very same thing?”
― Greg Egan, quote from Permutation City

“Mind yourself in that guardroom," Gilan told him. Thorn grinned cheerfully. He never had any stomach butterflies before a fight. "I plan to be subtle," he said.
Gilan looked at him, his head tilted curiously. "How's that?"
"Once we go through that door, I'll bash anything that moves. And if they don't move, Stig will bash them."
"You have a strange concept of subtle," Gilan said.
Thorn's grin grew wider, "So I've been told.”
― John Flanagan, quote from Slaves of Socorro

“هل تعلم؟ ما من شئ أمتع للإنسان من أن يعيش في صخبة حمقى، ومن أن يعزف على أوتارهم: إنه يستفيد من ذلك! لا تأخذ عليَّ أنني أقيم وزناً لأراء المجتمع، وإنني أحرص على بعض المواضعات، وأنني أنشد الاعتبار والجاه. أنا أعرف أنني أعيش في مجتمع تافه .. ولكنني حتى الأن أتحمس له، وأنعق مع الناعقين؛ إنني أتظاهر بالدفاع عنه دفاعاً حاراً، ومع ذلك فمن الممكن، إذا اقتضى الأمر، أن أهجره أول من يهجره. إنني أعرف جميع أفكارهم الجديدة، رغم أنني لم أحفل بها يوماً. وعلام أحفل بها؟ إنني لم أشعر يوماً بعذاب الضمير. إنني أقبل كل شئ، متى كان لي فيه نفع. وأمثالي كثيرون، ونحن جميعاً في أحسن حال حقاً. يمكن أن يفنى كل شئ على الأرض، وأن نظل نحن وحدنا لا نفنى أبداً. إننا نوجد منذ وُجِدَ الوجود .. قد يغرق الكون كله، ونبقى نحن نطفو على وجه الماء، نطفو إلى الأبد. أنظر، بهذه المناسبة، كم تطول حياة أمثالنا. إننا نعمر كثيراً، ألم يلفت نظرك ذلك؟ إننا نعيش حتى الثمانين، حتى التسعين. فالطبيعة نفسها تحمينا إذن .. هه هه .. أريد أن أبلغ التسعين حتماً، أنا لا أحب الموت. سحقاً للفلسفة. فلنشرب، يا عزيزي. كنا نتحدث عن البنات الجميلات لماذا تقوم؟”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Ezilenler

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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