Never Let Me Go Quotes

“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

“I just waited for that bit that went: “Baby, baby, never let me go . . .” And what I’d imagine was a woman who’d been told she couldn’t have babies, who’d really, really wanted them all her life. Then there’s a sort of miracle and she has a baby, and she holds this baby very close to her and walks around singing: “Baby, never let me go . . .” partly because she’s so happy, but also because she’s so afraid something will happen, that the baby will get ill or be taken away from her.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“When I say I wish she’d found out the whole score, it’s more because I feel sad at the idea of her finishing up different from me and Tommy. The way it is, it’s like there’s a line with us on one side and Ruth on the other, and when all’s said and done, I feel sad about that, and I think she would too if she could see it.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“You'll have heard the same talk. How maybe, after the fourth donation, even if you've technically completed, you're still conscious in some sort of way; how then you find there are more donations, plenty of them, on the other side of that line; how there are no more recovery centres, no carers, no friends; how there's nothing to do except watch your remaining donaitions until they switch you off. It's horror movie stuff, and most of the time people don't want to think about it. Not the whitecoats, not the carers---and usually not the donors.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“I'm sure Tommy felt it too, because we'd always hold each other very tight after times like that, as though that way we'd manage to keep the feeling away.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“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.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Since each of us was copied at some point from a normal person, there must be, for each of us, somewhere out there, a model getting on with his or her life.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“What I’m saying is that we were all of us struggling to adjust to our new life, and I suppose we all did things back then we later regretted. I was really upset by Ruth’s remark at the time, but it’s pointless now trying to judge her or anyone else for the way they behaved during those early days at the Cottages.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“I keep thinking about this river . . . 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 is too strong. They’ve got to let go . . . 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

“Tommy thought it possible the guardians had, throughout all our years at Hailsham, timed very carefully and deliberately everything they told us, so that we were always just too young to understand properly the latest piece of information. But of course we'd take it in at some level, so that before long all this stuff was there in our heads without us ever having examined it properly.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“She laughed and said: “Because nothing. I’d like you to forgive me, but I don’t expect you to.
Anyway, that’s not the half of it, not even a small bit of it, actually. The main thing is, I kept you and
Tommy apart.” Her voice had dropped again, almost to a whisper. “That was the worst thing I did.”
― 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 eve, about the way we were now thinking and planning.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“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.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“That talk with Tommy beside the pond: I think of it now as a kind of marker between the two eras. Not that anything significant started to happen immediately afterwards; but for me at least, that conversation was a turning point. I definitely started to look at everything differently. Where before I’d have backed away from awkward stuff, I began instead, more and more, to ask questions, if not out loud, at least within myself.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“So why had we stayed silent that day? I suppose it was because even at that age—we were nine or ten—we knew just enough to make us wary of that whole territory. It’s hard now to remember just how much we knew by then. We certainly knew—though not in any deep sense—that we were different from our guardians, and also from the normal people outside; we perhaps even knew that a long way down the line there were donations waiting for us.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“and before I knew it, I was saying my goodbyes.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“What do you think she’d have said if we’d asked her? ‘Excuse me, but do you think your friend was ever a clone model?’ She’d have thrown us out. We know it, so we might as well just say it. If you want to look for possibles, if you want to do it properly, then you look in the gutter. You look in rubbish bins. Look down the toilet, that’s where you’ll find where we all came from.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“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.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Why was I so hostile to Moira B. that day when she was, really, a natural ally? What it was, I suppose, is that Moira was suggesting she and I cross some line together, and I wasn’t prepared for that yet.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Miss Emily went on shaking her head. ‘It was never true. Even before the Morningdale scandal, even back when Hailsham was considered a shining beacon, an example of how we might move to a more humane and better way of doing things, even then, it wasn’t true. It’s best to be clear about this. A wishful rumour. That’s all it ever was. Oh dear, is that the men come for the cabinet?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Ama sanırım, gerçek şu ki, o sıralarda bizi birbirimizden ayırmaya çalışan güçlü gelgitler vardı ve ayrılığın tamamlanması için böyle bir şeyin olması gerekiyordu. Bunu o sırada anlamış olsaydık - kim bilir? - belki birbirimize daha sıkı sarılırdık.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Her gün önünden geçtiğiniz ayna bir gün aniden size bambaşka bir şey,rahatsız edici ve tuhaf bir şey göstermiştir.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Bir yerlerde bir ırmak olduğunu düşünüp duruyorum. Suları coşkun bir ırmak. Suyun içinde iki kişi var ve birbirlerine tutunmaya çalışıyorlar, bütün güçleriyle uğraşıyorlar, ama sonunda dayanamıyorlar. Akıntı çok kuvvetli. Birbirlerini bırakmak, ayrı yerlere sürüklenmek zorundalar. Sanırım bizim durumumuz da bu.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Belki de hiçbirimiz yaşadıklarımızı tam olarak anlamıyor ve yeterli zamanımız kalıp kalmadığını hissedemiyoruz.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Bir gün, belki de çok yakında, nasıl olduğunu hissetmeye başlayacaksın.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“And why shouldn’t they? Carers aren’t machines. You try and do your best for every donor, but in the end, it wears you down. You don’t have unlimited patience and energy. So when you get a chance to choose, of course, you choose your own kind. That’s natural. There’s no way I could have gone on for”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“that there are people out there, like Madame, who don’t hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you—of how you were brought into this world and why—and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs. 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

“I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they’d once belonged to the sea.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel, world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading , never let her go. That is what I saw. It wasn't really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you and it broke my heart. And I've never forgotten.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“I remember a huge tiredness coming over me, a kind of lethargy in the face of the tangled mess before me. It was like being given a maths problem when your brain’s exhausted, and you know there’s some far-off solution, but you can’t work up the energy even to give it a go.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go