Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

A master looks at every move he would like to make, especially the impossible ones

At gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.

I know I should just leave. Just go. Because there's a point where a mistake turns into a big mistake, and I should probably come to my senses before I get there.

It is just human nature to take time to connect the dots, I know that. But I also know that there can be a day of reckoning when you wish you had connected the dots more quickly.

Exploring how you could make a bad situation worse can sometimes tell you what not to do.

We genuinely believe to this day that it was an honest genuine mistake and we never imagined the punishment would be eight months. The precedent dictated that it was unlikely to be that. We don't regret he played for that period.

In real life, the most important decision you ever make is, where does reality leave off and make-believe begin? If you make a mistake about that, you're dead. You know, you're out on the street corner. You think there's no bus coming. You step out, you're dead.

Well I've gone and done it.

An opportunity missed once will present itself again, whereas a too hasty action can never be recalled.

Among a great many other things that chess teaches you is to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good. It trains you to think before grabbing and to think just as objectively when you're in trouble.

Analysis of opponents is something I like doing.

In many cases, if we knew what it would take, we might have thought twice about it, so it's often wonderful that we don't have hindsight.

Those split-second decisions that you can't take back, that's what I need to continue to improve.

It comes down to your decision-making and obviously you can get better and better as a decision-maker as you play, and get reps and go through experiences and learn but football's the same as life, you got to be a great decision maker to have success.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I was maybe too quick to leave Fulham.

Playing chess can make you a better poker player because it forces you to think several moves ahead. That kind of intense mental exercise develops a deeper level of thinking than is typically encountered when playing poker.

Life is very much about making the best decisions you can. So I think chess is very valuable.

Self-confidence is very important. If you don't think you can win, you will take cowardly decisions in the crucial moments, out of sheer respect for your opponent. You see the opportunity but also greater limitations than you should. I have always believed in what I do on the chessboard, even when I had no objective reason to. It is better to overestimate your prospects than underestimate them.

Why, then, do you think the white player might have done it?" Reynie considered. He imagined himself moving out his knight only to bring it right back to where it started. Why would he ever do such a thing? At last he said,"Perhaps because he doubted himself.

It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. In the stock market you don't base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time.

A man's head is not like a scallion, which will grow again if you cut it off; if you cut it off wrongly, then even if you want to correct your error, there is no way of doing it.

Evaluate. Long experience had taught me to evaluate and assess. When the unexpected gets dumped on you, don’t waste time. Don’t figure out how or why it happened. Don’t recriminate. Don’t figure out whose fault it is. Don’t work out how to avoid the same mistake next time. All of that you do later. If you survive.

I've always been kind of a strategic thinking person - I love sports for instance, but my interest in sports is 'cause I love watching strategy in action or playing it. I'm not into the drama so much, of the physical action. I'm interested in the coach and how he's strategizing.

People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little.

I tell you this, and I tell you plain: What you have done, you will do again; You will bite your tongue, careful or not, Upon the already-bitten spot.