Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

I hate to think life is just facts and laws.

'Hamlet' is one of the most dangerous things ever set down on paper. All the big, unknowable questions like what it is to be a human being; the difference between sanity and insanity; the meaning of life and death; what's real and not real. All these subjects can literally drive you mad.

I don't think things happen for a reason, but I think it's perfectly possible to experience life meaningfully.

How we come to be, and how we are what we are, is beyond any understanding. I have been obsessed by this, trying to understand the very nature of my existence.

What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.

I can get very philosophical and ask the questions Keats was asking as a young guy. What are we here for? What's a soul? What's it all about? What is thinking about, imagination?

One life is worth the universe. Poe was able to go right into the very depth of life and to demonstrate this.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.

Man - a being in search of meaning.

Life is short, and therefore, one thing being certain, death, let us take up a great ideal, and give up the whole life to it. For what is the value of life, this vegetating little low life of man? Subordinating it to one high ideal is the only value that life has.

Death is part of who we are. It guides us. It shapes us. It drives us to madness. Can you still be human if you have no mortal end

I am not a person and I am not an animal. There is something I am here for something I must do before I can go.

Every kid goes to school full of questions about meaning. You know, 'What's my place in the universe? What does it mean to be a human being? What are human beings?' Existing courses cannot help you answer those questions. They can't even help you ask them.

I really believe that 'Saw' makes us stop and think and question our motives and what we're doing here on Earth.

One idea I explore in my stand-up show is whether, if you try looking at the universe rationally and avoid coping mechanisms like mysticism or religion, you can still be happy knowing you are going to die after a brief time on this spinning ball.

I think life's an irrational obsession.

One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.

We breathe, we think, we conceive of our lives as narratives.

In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.

'Ikiru' is existential but with a lot of tenderness.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

A movie that's about other horror movies isn't interesting. A movie about who we are, is.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.