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 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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the inevitability of separation in relationships despite deep love.
In this poignant expression, the author uses the metaphor of a river to illustrate how strong currents can represent the forces that pull people apart, even when there is a deep bond. The imagery of two people struggling to hold onto each other amidst the powerful flow highlights the themes of love, struggle, and the acceptance of life's impermanence, suggesting that sometimes love is not enough to keep people together as circumstances change.
Themes
LoveSeparationRelationshipsImpermanenceLetting Go
In practice
Example use cases
A heartfelt speech at a wedding that acknowledges the complexity of lasting love.
More from Kazuo Ishiguro
All quotes →You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.
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
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
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
It is easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together.
Anne CarsonRead
The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.
Stanley HauerwasRead
And that's the insult of it, how always it comes back to a woman being a "good" mother in the world's eyes or a "bad" mother, how everything in a woman's life is funneled through her body between her legs.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
Don't quarrel with your parents even if you are on the right.
PlatoRead
It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone.
Annie ProulxRead
Hug and kiss whoever helped get you - financially, mentally, morally, emotionally - to this day. Parents, mentors, friends, teachers. If you're too uptight to do that, at least do the old handshake thing, but I recommend a hug and a kiss. Don't let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.
Stephen KingRead