The Remains of the Day

by Kazuo Ishiguro

it is just that one never knows when one might be obliged to give out that one is from Darlington Hall, and it is important that one be attired at such times in a manner worthy of one’s position.

he is, after all, an American gentleman and his ways are often very different.

this ‘dignity’ was something like a woman’s beauty and it was thus pointless to attempt to analyse it.

when lesser men trying to emulate his greatness mistook the superficial for the essence.

In one regrettable case, which I myself witnessed, it had become an established sport in the house for guests to ring for the butler and put to him random questions of the order of, say, who had won the Derby in such and such a year, rather as one might to a Memory Man at the music hall.

My father’s generation was not one accustomed to discussing and analysing in the way ours is

there will be no discernible traces left of the recent occurrence by that time.’

It was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one’s development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one’s ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has new standards by which to judge oneself.

I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought through thoroughly.

ensconced

Love this word!

as though they were French chefs guarding their recipes.

But I drift.

obliging me to assist Miss Kenton a little to allow her to reach the passenger door.

It is possible these particular persons are simply united by the anticipation of the evening ahead.