Quotes from A Pale View of Hills

Kazuo Ishiguro ·  183 pages

Rating: (13.1K votes)


“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


About the author

Kazuo Ishiguro
Born place: in Nagasaki, Japan
Born date November 8, 1954
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Wen grinned and I felt a warm glow and an odd dizzy sensation. And then I remembered something my dad once wrote me about falling in love. He said the phrase was apt because falling is exactly what it can feel like, as if you've finally allowed yourself to let go of some safety bar you didn't even know you were clinging to, and suddenly you find yourself tumbling towards the exciting unknown.”
― Mark Peter Hughes, quote from Lemonade Mouth


“Why does Homer give us descriptions so much more vivid than all the poets. Because he sees so much more around him. We speak about poetry so abstractly because we all tend to be poor poets. The aesthetic phenomenon is fundamentally simple: if someone
simply possesses the capacity to see a living game going on continually and to live all the time
surrounded by hordes of ghosts, then the man is a poet; if someone simply feels the urge to change himself and to speak out from other bodies and souls, then that person is a dramatist.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Birth of Tragedy


“They are now informing me that not only are they better than the powerful, the masters of the world whose spittle they have to lick (not from fear, not at all from fear! but because God orders them to honour those in authority) – not only are they better, but they have a “better time”, or at least will have a better time one day. But enough! enough! I can’t bear it any longer. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where ideals are fabricated – it seems to me just to stink of lies.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals


“This can’t be real. It will never be real, I won’t accept it. This isn’t happening. In her mind she saw his eyes open again, remembering her relief at seeing him alive. But he wasn’t… As soon as his hand had touched her, as it had so often before, she had known. The cold”
― Michael G. Manning, quote from The God-Stone War


“Baby, I'm Latina. We make you guys look good. All you have to do is stand there and look pretty.”
― Marie Hall, quote from A Moment


Interesting books

Natural Born Charmer
(28.8K)
Natural Born Charmer
by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Runemarks
(6.5K)
Runemarks
by Joanne Harris
Noli Me Tángere
(5.6K)
Noli Me Tángere
by José Rizal
Nothing to Lose
(41.5K)
Nothing to Lose
by Lee Child
The Many Sins of Lord Cameron
(11.3K)
The Many Sins of Lor...
by Jennifer Ashley
The People in the Trees
(10.3K)
The People in the Tr...
by Hanya Yanagihara

About BookQuoters

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.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.