We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.
Kazuo IshiguroRead
We all live inside bodies that will deteriorate. But when you look at human beings, they're capable of very decent things: love, loyalty. When time is running out, they don't care about possessions or status. They want to put things right if they've done wrong.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Human beings prioritize meaningful relationships and moral choices over material possessions as time runs out.
In this quote, Kazuo Ishiguro reflects on the transient nature of human life and the physical deterioration of our bodies. Despite this reality, he emphasizes the inherent capacity of individuals to engage in noble actions such as love and loyalty, suggesting that in the face of mortality, people often seek to reconcile their past mistakes and focus on what truly matters, rather than clinging to their material belongings or societal status.
Themes
LifeRelationshipsMortalityLoveLoyaltyValues
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of community service and personal integrity.
More from Kazuo Ishiguro
All quotes βYou need to remember that. If youβre to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.
Kazuo IshiguroRead
I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.
Kazuo IshiguroRead
What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.
Kazuo IshiguroRead
If you were a boy and a girl and you were in love with each other, really, properly in love, and if you could show it, then the people who run Hailsham, they sorted it out for you. They sorted it out so you could have a few years together before you began your donations.
Kazuo IshiguroRead
Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.
Kazuo IshiguroRead
Similar quotes
After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.
Gustave FlaubertRead
Life's very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I've got as far as that. To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged - well, one can't do all these things at once, worse luck, because they're so contradictory. It's then that proportion comes in - to live by proportion. Don't begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.
E. M. ForsterRead
Real sadness is such an all-encompassing intense thing that it takes you out of your humdrum existence. If you can still function, you want to show it while it's peaking. So when people tell you to cheer up, it's not always the best thing.
David ByrneRead
Everything was good. But it was awful, too.
Markus ZusakRead
Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.
Hunter S. ThompsonRead
I have in my own fashion learned the lesson that life is effort, unremittingly repeated.
Henry JamesRead