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
I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they'd once belonged to the sea.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the nostalgia and impermanence of books that have been well-loved and weathered over time.
Kazuo Ishiguro uses the imagery of old, worn paperbacks to evoke feelings of nostalgia and the transient nature of cherished items. The phrase suggests that these books have been deeply connected to the reader's life, much like how once-flowing water shapes land; they have stories and memories etched in their pages, which might have once felt as if they belonged to the vastness of the sea, emphasizing their importance and the passage of time.
Themes
BooksNostalgiaLiteratureMemoriesImpermanence
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a book club discussion to reflect on the impact of literature in our lives.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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.
Kazuo IshiguroRead
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