Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

In 1957, I decided: write or perish.

If I live for another ten years I shall probably have written all that I want to write.

In the first year, 1988, I wrote and sold 3 novels.

I've always tried to be a poet more than anything else. I mean, professional musicians die.

I want to put out a few books throughout my lifetime.

If a man begins writing at thirty, by the time he is fifty or sixty, the bulk of his work has been done. By the time he is eighty, he's got nothing more, you know?

I think now I'm up to something like 85 different titles that I've published.

An author departs, he does not die.

I don't know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

You are only as good as your last book, and so there has to be a book.

There are bits and pieces of me probably in every one of my 35 or so books.

I've had over a dozen and a half novels published since late 1994 when my first novel, 'Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls' came out.

I have been writing for 50 years and readers still read my first book from when I was in the Marine Corps.

And then I wrote my first autobiography when I - well, it was 23 years ago. And since then I've written about one book every two years.

I don't read my own books, but sometimes if there is a new edition I open it and then I feel this life of a writer was not so hopeless, not so bad.

I always loved to read, and I wanted to be part of the project of literature. My physical longevity is due to luck, and my literary longevity is due to my physical longevity.

I have written about 240 books and some short stories, too. It's taken me many years.

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don't know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

I do tend to feel more connected to dead writers, perhaps because they have finished their work.

I still want to give my public, such as it is, a book a year.

I really only have been seriously writing, finishing things and publishing things since January '91.

I attempt to write a good novel. Whether it is literature or not is something that will be decided by the ages, not by me and not by a pack of critics around the globe.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

I've always been a pretty hard worker. That's how I've written over a hundred books.

Every writer secretly hopes that what he or she has written will endure.