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Quote by Kazuo Ishiguro

“Typically in my novels the narrator tells a story by remembering, and the memories are colored by this and colored by that. So the whole universe of the novel tends to be framed by the narrator's memories and thoughts.”

Quote by Kazuo Ishiguro

Author

Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British novelist known for his unique literary style and profound insights into human nature. His works often explore themes of memory, identity, and common human emotions. Born on November 8, 1954, Ishiguro's career began with the publication of his first novel 'When Breath Becomes Air' in 1982, which received widespread acclaim. more

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“There questions of wanting to be an artist, and what does that mean, what makes you an artist? Are you an artist if you're in a gallery in New York and not an artist if you're doing it at home? Do you need legitimation to count? If you've been acculturated to believe that you have certain obligations - familial, social, human - if multitasking has been your forte and that's what's been praised and rewarded, where do you find the single-mindedness, the selfishness to do something like art? I think those are questions that arise differently for women and for men.”

“I spoke to my father - my father's from Pakistan and he's also a lawyer - I said to him, "Well what does the Shari'a say?" And he said, "Well, of course it doesn't justify suicide bombs," but he didn't seem to know where the Shari'a came from or what it was all about. The more I asked people in my family as well as friends, the more I realized that there seemed to be widespread ignorance in the Muslim community. And that's something which I actually found to be the case over the next two and a half, three years I spent writing the book.”

“I realized that the ignorance was profound. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, it's just that people didn't know what the Shari'a was, as such. They knew that it was something good. I should say perhaps that the Shari'a, etymologically in Arabic, means a desert path to water. It means a path towards salvation, in the seventh-century context, to the desert people. If you have a path to water, that's the path you want to take to get you where you want to get to; where you should get to. And that much was clear but beyond that people didn't know what the rules were.”