“But then again I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn't like these raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I'm wondering if without our memories, there's nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“When it was too late for rescue, it was still early enough for revenge.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“But God will know the slow tread of an old couple’s love for each other, and understand how black shadows make part of its whole.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Yet are you so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?"
"It may be for some, father, but not for us. Axl and I wish to have again the happy moments we shared together. To be robbed of them is as if a thief came in the night and took what's most precious from us."
"Yet the mist covers all memories, the bad as well as the good. Isn't that so, mistress?"
"We'll have the bad ones come back too, even if they make us weep or shake with anger. For isn't it the life we've shared?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Who knows what will come when quick-tongued men make ancient grievances rhyme with fresh desire for land and conquest?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“A couple may claim to be bonded by love, but we boatmen may see instead resentment, anger, even hatred. Or a great barrenness. Sometimes a fear of loneliness and nothing more.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“How is it possible to hate so deeply for deeds not yet done?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Are you still there, Axl?”
“Still here, princess.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“What use is a god with boundless mercy, sir? You mock me as a pagan, yet the gods of my ancestors pronounce clearly their ways and punish severely when we break their laws. Your Christian god of mercy gives men licence to pursue their greed, their lust for land and blood, knowing a few prayers and a little penance will bring forgiveness and blessing.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“The danger isn't the river's speed, friend, but its slowness.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Boatman, I’ve spoken honestly to you, and I hope it doesn’t cast your earlier judgement of us in doubt. For I suppose there’s some would hear my words and think our love flawed and broken. But God will know the slow tread of an old couple’s love for each other, and understand how black shadows make part of its whole.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Abiding love that has endured the years—that we see only rarely. When we do, we’re only too glad to ferry the couple together.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Foolishness, sir. How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly? Or a peace hold for ever built on slaughter and a magician’s trickery?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“When the hour’s too late for rescue, it’s still early enough for revenge.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Then he took the sword in both hands and raised it—and Gawain’s posture took on an unmistakable grandeur.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“What kind of god is it, sir, wishes wrong to go forgotten and unpunished?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“The stranger thought it might be God himself had forgotten much from our pasts, events far distant, events of the same day. And if a thing is not in God’s mind, then what chance of it remaining in those of mortal men?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“خدایی که بخشایش بی‌حدواندازه دارد، چه فایده دارد آقا؟ خدایان اجداد من قواعد و شیوه‌های خودشان را به‌وضوح اعلام می‌کنند و وقتی ما قوانینشان را نقض می‌کنیم، به‌شدت مارا مجازات می‌کنند. خدای شما به انسان‌ها اجازه طمع ورزیدن، شهوت تصرف زمین و ریختن خون را می‌دهد، با این تصور که باکمی دعا همه گناهانشان بخشیده می‌شود و آمرزیده می‌شوند.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Yet are you so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Be merciful and leave this place. Leave this country to rest in forgetfulness.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Some of you will have fine monuments by which the living may remember the evil done to you. Some of you will have only crude wooden crosses or painted rocks, while yet others of you must remain hidden in the shadows of history.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises,”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“when travellers speak of their most cherished memories, it’s impossible for them to disguise the truth. A couple may claim to be bonded by love, but we boatmen may see instead resentment, anger, even hatred. Or a great barrenness. Sometimes a fear of loneliness and nothing more. Abiding love that has endured the years – that we see only rarely.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“nothing and yet everything had passed between us.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“This country awakens so many memories, though each seems like some restless sparrow I know will flee any moment into the breeze.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Perhaps God’s so deeply ashamed of us, of something we did, that he’s wishing himself to forget.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“Where once we fought for land and God, we now fought to avenge fallen comrades, themselves slaughtered in vengeance. Where could it end? Babes growing to men knowing only days of war.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
“It would be the saddest thing to me, princess. To walk separately from you, when the ground will let us go as we always did.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Buried Giant
Kazuo Ishiguro
Born place: in Nagasaki, Japan
Born date November 8, 1954
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“Listening to my father during those early years, I began to realise how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from My Uncle Oswald
“A lie is like a pet- you have to take care of it, or it'll turn on you and bite you in the ass.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, quote from Heroes Die
“In roughly that same time period, while General George Armstrong Custer achieved world fame in failure and catastrophe, Mackenzie would become obscure in victory. But it was Mackenzie, not Custer, who would teach the rest of the army how to fight Indians. As he moved his men across the broken, stream-crossed country, past immense herds of buffalo and prairie-dog towns that stretched to the horizon, Colonel Mackenzie did not have a clear idea of what he was doing, where precisely he was going, or how to fight Plains Indians in their homelands. Neither did he have the faintest idea that he would be the one largely responsible for defeating the last of the hostile Indians. He was new to this sort of Indian fighting, and would make many mistakes in the coming weeks. He would learn from them. For now, Mackenzie was the instrument of retribution. He had been dispatched to kill Comanches in their Great Plains fastness because, six years after the end of the Civil War, the western frontier was an open and bleeding wound, a smoking ruin littered with corpses and charred chimneys, a place where anarchy and torture killings had replaced the rule of law, where Indians and especially Comanches raided at will. Victorious in war, unchallenged by foreign foes in North America for the first time in its history, the Union now found itself unable to deal with the handful of remaining Indian tribes that had not been destroyed, assimilated, or forced to retreat meekly onto reservations where they quickly learned the meaning of abject subjugation and starvation. The hostiles were all residents of the Great Plains; all were mounted, well armed, and driven now by a mixture of vengeance and political desperation. They were Comanches, Kiowas, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, and Western Sioux. For Mackenzie on the southern plains, Comanches were the obvious target: No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.”
― S.C. Gwynne, quote from Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
“There are a number of things a woman can tell about a man who is roughly twenty-nine years old,
sitting in the cab of a pickup truck at 3:37 in the afternoon on a weekday, facing the Pacific,
writing furiously on the back of pink invoice slips. Such a man may or may not be employed, but
regardless, there is mystery there. If this man is with a dog, then that's good, because it means he's
capable of forming relationships. But if the dog is a male dog, that's probably a bad sign, because
it means the guy is likely a dog, too. A girl dog is much better, but if the guy is over thirty, any
kind of dog is a bad sign regardless, because it means he's stopped trusting humans altogether. In
general, if nothing else, guys my age with dogs are going to be work.
Then there's stubble: stubble indicates a possible drinker, but if he's driving a van or a pickup
truck, he hasn't hit bottom yet, so watch out, honey. A guy writing something on a clipboard
while facing the ocean at 3:37 P.M. may be writing poetry, or he may be writing a letter begging
someone for forgiveness. But if he's writing real words, not just a job estimate or something
business-y, then more likely than not this guy has something emotional going on, which could
mean he has a soul.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Hey Nostradamus!
“She was gorgeous and fearless and I was in awe.”
― Patrick Carman, quote from Thirteen Days to Midnight
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