Quotes from The Buried Giant

“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

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“Elm

BY SYLVIA PLATH

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, this big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?——

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.”
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