Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.

By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin, and pretend to be somebody else.

When you go along in life and develop whatever notoriety you do, people begin to relate to you differently, and I'm just always most comfortable with the people I grew up with.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

Take pains to get on your side the young men of high rank, and keep the friendship of those whom you already have. They will contribute much to your political position.

Some have objected to the instruction of the lower classes from an apprehension that it would lift them above their sphere, make them dissatisfied with their station in life, and, by impairing the habits of subordination, endanger the tranquility of the state; an objection devoid surely of all force and validity.

A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.

I have seen celebrities whose friends change as they become more successful, but my friends haven't changed over 30 years. I've still got some of the friends I had when I was 14 and I see them regularly with their families.

Raise your hand if you have a poor friend?

Economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege

I'm not interested in classes ... Far be it from me to foster inferiority complexes among the workers by trying to make them think they belong to some special class.

The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, no worse, for a people than another.

There are no human beings whose sense of social identity is fully and exclusively given for themselves by the membership of the working (or any other) class

That certain groups do much better in America than others—as measured by income, occupational status, test scores and so on – is difficult to talk about.

Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.

Freedom breeds inequality.

We were working class, and you don't lose that. Later on, I bolted on media middle class... and now people like me are in the House of Lords.

The functioning of our society is in a certain way sclerotic.

I don't believe that killing the French model in order to become the U.K. or the United States overnight is the solution. You have a big debate on inequality there, and for our society, a lot of inequality would not be bearable.

I've found that the more friends I have, the luckier I am.

In high school, I felt pressure to fit in with groups and with people who didn't actually want to be my friend. That's something I learned moving forward into adulthood: to keep the people around me people who love me for exactly who I am.

In the local state school I attended in England, I saw and heard far more awareness of where a person stood in the social hierarchy than I had ever heard stateside.

Being exposed to the enlisted Army was an eye-opener. I thought everyone was like me, but the enlisted Army is a constituency of the dispossessed.

I have a very fun husband. He's managed to hang on to every person he's known since grammar school.

Most of my friends tend to be people who I've known since I was at school.