Never Let Me Go Quotes

“For a while at least, you're demoralised. Some of us learn pretty quick how to deal with it. But others—like Laura, say—they never do.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“... I was suddenly looking at everything—the Cottages, everybody there—in a different light. I was now one of the ones leaving, and soon enough, everyone knew it.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“It was the way she did this, rather than her words, that suddenly made me see things her way; I could see that Ruth was making a big effort to present not just herself, but all of us, in the right way to Chrissie and Rodney; and here I was, threatening to undermine her and start an embarrassing scene.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“We always felt that we were a part of something bigger, living at the Cottages.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“...I came to see Miss Lucy as being not quite like the other guardians.

It's even possible I began to realise, right back then, the nature of her worries and frustrations.”
― 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.

But at other times, I think that's wrong—that it was just to do with me and Ruth, and the sort of loyalty she inspired in me in those days.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“It‟s funny,” Tommy said to me when we were remembering it all again a few years ago. “None of us stopped to think about how she felt, Miss Lucy herself. We never worried if she'd got into
trouble, saying what she did to us. We were so selfish back then.”
“But you can't blame us,” I said. “We'd been taught to think about each other, but never about the guardians. The idea the guardians had differences between them, that never occurred to us.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Ruth told me she's prepared to call it quits and have you get back with her again. I think that's a good chance for you. Don't mess it up.”

He was quiet for a few seconds, then said: “I don't know, Kath. There are all these other things to think about.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Then as I pulled away, he smiled and waved. I watched him in my rear-view, and he was standing there almost till the last moment. Right at the end, I saw him raise his hand again vaguely and turn away towards the overhanging roof. Then the Square had gone from the mirror.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“We all know it. We're modelled from trash. Junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps. Convicts, maybe, just so long as they aren‟t psychos. That's what we come from. We all know it, so why don't we say it? A woman like that? Come on. Yeah, right, Tommy. A bit of fun. Let's have a bit of fun pretending.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Suppose some special arrangement has been made for Hailsham students. Suppose two
people say they're truly in love, and they want extra time to be together. Then you see, Kath, there has to be a way to judge if they're really telling the truth. That they aren't just saying they're in love, just to defer their donations. You see how difficult it could
be to decide? Or a couple might really believe they're in love, but it's just a sex thing. Or just a crush. You see what I mean, Kath? It'll be really hard to judge, and it's probably impossible to get it right every time. But the point is, whoever decides, Madame or whoever it is, they need something to go on.”
I nodded slowly. “So that's why they took away our art…”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Our little movement, we were always too fragile, always too dependent on the whims
of our supporters. But it had always been a struggle, and after Morningdale, after the climate changed, we had no chance. The world didn't want to be reminded how the donation programme really worked. They
didn't want to think about you students, or about the conditions you were brought up in. In other words, my dears, they wanted you back in the shadows.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?” She let that hang, and I thought I could see tears in her eyes again.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Of course I felt bad about it all, especially about Tommy's animals. But it wasn't as simple any more as going to him and saying sorry and explaining how things really were. A few years earlier, even six months earlier, it might have worked out that way. Tommy and I would have talked it over and sorted it out.
But somehow, by that second summer, things were different. Maybe it was because of this relationship with Lenny, I don't know. Anyway, talking to Tommy wasn‟t so easy any more. On the surface, at least, it was much like before, but we never mentioned the animals or what had happened in the churchyard.”
― 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

“And the more we heard her and looked at her, the less she seemed like Ruth. It was a feeling that grew among us almost tangibly, and I could tell that Ruth, absorbed in a picture on the other side of the room, was feeling it as much as anyone. That was probably why we went on shuffling around that gallery for so long; we were delaying the moment when we'd have to confer.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“What they said,” Chrissie continued, “was that if you were a boy and a girl, and you were in love with each other, really, properly in love, and if you could show it, then the people who run Hailsham, they sorted it out for you. They sorted it out so you could have a few years together before you began your donations.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Her general drift was clear enough: we were all very special, being Hailsham students, and so it was all the more disappointing when we behaved badly.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“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

“We were just trying to create a place for ourselves in a world that didn’t want us.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“sex affects emotions in ways you’d never expect.” We had to be extremely careful about having sex in the outside world, especially with people who weren’t students, because out there sex meant all sorts of things. Out there people were even fighting and killing each other over who had sex with whom.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“We were virtually attempting to square the circle.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“He knew he was close to completing and so that's what he was doing: getting me to describe things to him, so they'd really sink in, so that maybe during those sleepless nights, with the drugs and the pain and the exhaustion, the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Siete stati delle pedine fortunate. C'era un certo clima allora e adesso non c'è più. Dovete accettare il fatto che qualche volta è così che vanno le cose in questo mondo. Le opinioni della gente, i loro sentimenti, spirano in una direzione, poi in un'altra. E' capitato semplicemente che voi siate cresciuti in un particolare momento di questo processo. - Può anche essere stata una moda passeggera, - dissi. - Però per noi rappresenta la nostra vita.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Non lasciarmi

“When you were discussing this with Marie-Claude. You said it was because your art would reveal what you were 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

“Rồi lại còn nỗi cô đơn nữa. Từ nhỏ đến lớn ta đã quen xung quanh lúc nào cũng đông người, ta chỉ quen có mỗi thế thôi, thế rồi đột nhiên ta thành người chăm sóc. Suốt giờ này sang giờ khác ta một thân một mình lái xe qua khắp nước, từ trung tâm này đến trung tâm kia, từ bệnh viện này đến bệnh viện kia, ngủ trong nhà trọ qua đêm, chẳng có ai để thổ lộ những nỗi niềm lo lắng của ta, chẳng có ai để ta cười đùa với cả. Chỉ đôi khi ta mới tình cờ gặp một học sinh ta biết - một người chăm sóc hay một người hiến mà ta nhận ra là người quen từ xưa - nhưng rồi cũng chẳng bao giờ có nhiều thì giờ. Ta luôn vội vàng, không thì cũng kiệt quệ không còn hơi sức đâu để trò chuyện ra hồn nữa. Chẳng mấy chốc, những giờ dài đằng đẵng, những chuyến đi, những giấc ngủ chập chờn ngắt quãng, tất cả chúng len lỏi vào bản thể ta, trở thành một phần của ta, khiến cho ai cũng thấy, trong dáng điệu của ta, cái nhìn của ta, cách đi kiểu nói của ta.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“we’d somehow developed this idea that how well you were settling in at the Cottages – how well you were coping – was somehow reflected by how many books you’d read.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“But I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I'll have only the roads, the big grey sky and my daydreams for company.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“And it started to dawn on me, I suppose, that a lot of things I'd always assumed I'd plenty of time to get round to doing, I might now have to act on pretty soon or else let them go forever.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“I was upset at the time, yes. But I didn't believe it to be anything so different from other tiffs we'd had. It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven, could unravel and separate over a thing like that.

But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task. If we'd understood that back then - who knows? - maybe we'd have kept a tighter hold of one another.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go