Never Let Me Go Quotes

“Then Tommy said: “So there's definitely nothing. No deferral, nothing like that.”
“Tommy,” I murmured, and glared at him.
But Miss Emily said gently: “No, Tommy. There's nothing like that. Your life must now run the
course that's been set for it.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“From your perspective today, Kathy, your bemusement is perfectly reasonable. But you must try and see it historically. After the war, in the early fifties, when the great breakthroughs in science followed one after another so rapidly, there wasn't time to take stock, to ask the sensible questions. Suddenly there were all these new possibilities laid before us, all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions. This was what the world noticed the most, wanted the most...By the time people became concerned about students, by the time they came to consider just how you were reared, whether you should have been brought into existence at all, well, by then it was too late...How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? There was no going back. However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease. For a long time you were kept in the shadow...[and if people think about you], they tried to convince themselves you weren't really like us. That you were less than human, so it didn't matter...Do you see what we were up against? We were virtually attempting to square the circle. Here was the world, requiring students to donate. While that remained the case, there would always be a barrier against seeing you as properly human.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“We took away your art because it would reveal you souls or, to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it’s a cold moment. It’s like walking past a mirror you’ve walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn’t be who you are today if we’d not protected you. You wouldn’t have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn’t have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“So that feeling came again, even though I tried to keep it out: that we were doing all of this too late; that there’d once been a time for it, but we’d let that go by, and there was something ridiculous, reprehensible even, about the way we were now thinking and planning.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how I think it is with us. It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Küçük bir kız gördüm, eski iyi yürekli dünyayı göğsüne yaslamış, artık kalamayacağını yüreğinde hissettiği bu dünyayı tutuyor, onu asla bırakmasın istiyordu.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in this world. People's opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grow up at a certain point in the process.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“I thought sooner or later someone would start saying it had gone too far, but it just kept on, and no one said anything. I”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“If you’re going to have decent lives, then you’ve got to know and know properly. None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars. And none of you will be working in supermarkets as I heard some of you planning the other day. Your lives are set out for you. You’ll become adults, then before you’re old, before you’re even middle-aged, you’ll start to donate your vital organs. That’s what each of you was created to do. You’re not like the actors you watch on your videos, you’re not even like me. You were brought into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all of them, have been decided.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“It might be just some trend that came and went,” I said. “But for us, it’s our life.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Then of course I found it. I’d been flicking through a row of cassette cases, my mind on other things, when suddenly there it was, under my fingers, looking just the way it had all those years ago: Judy, her cigarette, the coquettish look for the barman, the blurred palms in the background.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Everything suddenly felt perfect: an hour set aside, stretching ahead of us, and there wasn't a better way to spend it. I had to really hold myself back from giggling stupidly, or jumping up and down on the pavement like a little kid.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Fece una risata e mi circondò con un braccio, mentre rimanevamo seduti l'uno accanto all'altra.
Poi aggiunse: "Continuo a pensare a un fiume da qualche parte là fuori, con l'acqua che scorre velocissima. E quelle due persone nell'acqua, che cercano di tenersi strette, più che possono, ma alla fine devono desistere. La corrente è troppo forte. Devono mollare, separarsi. È la stessa cosa per noi. È un peccato, Kath, perché ci siamo amati per tutta la vita. Ma alla fine non possiamo rimanere insieme per sempre.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Maybe Ruth thought we'd be spending hours talking about my future; maybe she thought she'd have a big influence on whether or not I changed my mind.But I kept a certain distance from her, just as I did from Tommy. We didn't really talk properly again at the Cottages, and before I knew it, I was saying my goodbyes”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“And there was a tree stump outside the Black Barn everyone called 'Dave's stump' because for over three years, until a few weeks before our arrival, he'd sat on it to read and write, sometimes even when it was raining or cold.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Sie warten also, wenn auch unbewusst, auf den Augenblick, in dem Sie erkennen, dass Sie tatsächlich anders sind; dass dort draußen Menschen sind wie Madame, die ihnen weder Übles wollen noch Hass gegen Sie empfinden, und doch schon beim Gedanken an Ihre Existenz, an die Art und Weise, wie Sie zur Welt kamen, erschaudern und sich vor der Vorstellung fürchten, sie könnten von Ihnen berührt werden. Wenn Sie sich das erste Mal mit den Augen einer solchen Person sehen, wird Ihnen kalt ums Herz. Es ist, als sähen Sie einen Spiegel, an dem Sie jeden Tag Ihres Lebens vorbeigegangen sind, und auf einmal zeigt er Ihnen etwas anderes, etwas Fremdes, Verstörendes.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Why did we take away your artwork? Why did we do that? You said an interesting thing earlier, Tommy. When you were discussing this with Marie-Claude. You said it was because your art would reveal what you like. What you were like inside. That's what you said, wasn't it? Well, you weren't far wrong about that. We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro , Never Let Me Go

“...now they'd been left in each other‟s company, they were suffering a fate they thoroughly deserved.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“I think I sensed how beyond that line, there was something harder and darker and I didn't want that. Not for me, not for any of us.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“If you can't find someone with whom you truly wish to share this experience, then don’t!”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“She was a nice enough girl, Lucy Wainright. But after she'd been with us for a while, she began to have these ideas. She thought you students had to be made more aware. More aware of what lay ahead of you, who you were, what you were for. She believed you should be given as full a picture as possible. That to do anything less would be somehow
to cheat you. We considered her view and concluded she was mistaken.”
“Why?” Tommy asked. “Why did you think that?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“But even that first time, there was something there, a feeling, right there alongside our sense that this was a beginning, a gateway we were passing through. I didn't want to
acknowledge it for a long time, and even when I did, I tried to persuade myself it was something that would go away along with
his various aches and pains...What I mean is, right from that first time, there was something in Tommy's manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed to say: “Yes, we're doing this now and I'm glad we're doing it now. But what a pity we left it so late.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“...however much we might have fallen out during the day, come bed-time, Ruth and I would still find ourselves sitting side by side on my mattress, sipping our hot drinks, exchanging our deepest feelings about our new life like nothing had ever come between us.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“...a scientist called James Morningdale, quite talented in his way. He carried on his work in a remote part of Scotland, where I suppose
he thought he'd attract less attention. What he wanted was to offer people the possibility of having children with enhanced characteristics. Superior intelligence, superior athleticism, that sort of thing...As I say, it never became an enormous matter. But it did
create a certain atmosphere, you see. It reminded people, reminded them of a fear they'd always had. It's one thing to
create students, such as yourselves, for the donation programme. But a generation of created children who'd take their place in
society? Children demonstrably superior to the rest of us? Oh no. That frightened people. They recoiled from that.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“But that wasn't all.” Tommy‟s voice was now down to a whisper. “What she told Roy, what she let slip, which she probably didn't mean to let slip, do you remember, Kath? She told Roy that things like pictures, poetry, all that kind of stuff, she said they revealed what you were like inside. She said they revealed your soul.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“And having recently been in much the same position, it was easy to recognise the signs of her looking around for some opportunity to do something nice, something really special for me. It was a good feeling, and I remember even thinking once or twice how it would be better if she didn't get a chance for ages, just so the good feeling between us could go on and on.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“They sorted it out so you could have a few years together before you began your donations.”
There was now a strange atmosphere around the table, a kind of tingle going round...They'd heard of this Hailsham couple, the guy had only a few weeks left before he became a carer. And they went to see someone and got everything put back three years...Three years just to themselves, because they could prove they were properly in love.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“We were just trying to create a place for ourselves in a world that didn’t want us...We didn’t have to be the same as them, but we wanted to be part of their world.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go