When We Were Orphans Quotes

“Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow's sky.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“It's all right. I'm not upset. After all, they were just things. When you've lost your mother and your father, you can't care so much about things, can you?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“The colonel nodded. "Our childhood seems so far away now. All this" - he gestured out of the vehicle - "so much suffering. One of our Japanese poets, a court lady many years ago, wrote how sad this was. She wrote of how our childhood becomes like a foreign land once we have grown."
"Well, Colonel, it's hardly a foreign land to me. In many ways, it's where I've continued to live all my life. It's only now I've started to make my journey from it.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro , When We Were Orphans

“Wasn’t really, to tell you the truth. No shock at all.” Then he went on: “I always told her she should go, told her she should go and find love, you know, true love. She deserves it, don’t you think? That’s where she’s gone now. Off to find true love. Perhaps she’ll find it too. Out there, on the South China Sea, who knows? Perhaps she’ll meet a traveller, in a port, in a hotel, who knows? She’s become a romantic, you see? I had to let her go.” There were now tears welling in his eyes.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“It has occurred to me that I should try and view in a similar spirit something which, over these three weeks I have been here in Shanghai, has come to be a perennial source of irritation: namely, the way people here seem determined at every opportunity to block one’s view. No sooner has one entered a room or stepped out from a car than someone or other will have smilingly placed himself right within one’s line of vision, preventing the most basic perusal of one’s surroundings. Often as not, the offending person is one’s very host or guide of that moment; but should there be any lapse in this quarter, there is never a shortage of bystanders eager to make good the shortcoming. As far as I can ascertain, all the national groups that make up the community here—English, Chinese, French, American, Japanese, Russian—subscribe to this practice with equal zeal, and the inescapable conclusion is that this custom is one that has grown up uniquely here within Shanghai’s International Settlement, cutting across all barriers of race and class.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“She wrote of how our childhood becomes like a foreign land once we have grown.” “Well, Colonel, it’s hardly a foreign land to me. In many ways, it’s where I’ve continued to live all my life. It’s only now I’ve started to make my journey from”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“She wrote of how our childhood becomes like a foreign land once we have grown.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“I was upset. But I'm not any more. You have to look forward in life.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“Those were splendid days. We didn’t know it then, of course, just how splendid they were. Children never do, I suppose.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.

I do not wish to appear smug; but drifting through my days here in London, I believe I can indeed own up to a certain contentment. I enjoy my walks in the parks, I visit the galleries; and increasingly of late, I have come to take a foolish pride in sifting through old newspaper reports of my cases in the Reading Room at the British Museum. This city, in other words, has come to be my home, and I should not mind if I had to live out the rest of my days here. Nevertheless, there are those times when a sort of emptiness fills my hours, and I shall continue to give Jennifer's invitation serious thought.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“Children can be very taxing.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“So identical were their pitiful whimpers, the way their screams gave way to desperate entreaties then returned to screams, that the notion came to me: this was what each of us would go through on our way to death, that these terrible noises were as universal as the crying of newborn babies.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“The war, ghastly as it was, represented no more than “an awkward window in Man’s evolution” when for a few years our technical progress had run ahead of our organisational capacities.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“A veces es muy difícil, lo sé. Es como si todo tu mundo se derrumbara a tu alrededor. Pero te diré una cosa, Jenny. Estás llevando a cabo maravillosamente la tarea de ir poniendo de nuevo las piezas en su sitio. Créeme, es cierto. Sé que jamás podrá ser lo mismo, pero sé también que está en tu mano seguir en la brecha y llegar a forjarte un futuro feliz. Y yo siempre estaré aquí para ayudarte. Quiero que lo sepas”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“أعرف أنه احيانًا يكون صعبًا وكأن العالم كله قد انهار من حولك”
― كازو إيشيجورو, When We Were Orphans

“I think it would be no bad thing if boys like you all grew up with a bit of everything. We might all treat each other a good deal better then. Be less of these wars for one thing. Oh yes. Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won’t be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It’ll be because people have changed. They’ll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It’s healthy.” “But if I did, everything might . . .” I stopped. “Everything might what, Puffin?” “Like that blind there”—I pointed—“if the twine broke. Everything might scatter.” Uncle Philip stared at the blind I had indicated. Then he rose, went to the window and touched it gently. “Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it’s something we can’t easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it’ll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.” He sighed, as though I had just defeated him in an argument.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“جنگ هرچند بسیار وحشتناک صرفاً تصویری هولناک از تکامل نوع بشر بود.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“وقتی بزرگ می‌شویم کودکی‌مان به سرزمین بیگانه‌ای شباهت پیدا می‌کند.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“شاید یک روز همه درگیری‌ها و جنگ‌ها به‌پایان برسد، و دلیلش هم سیاستمداران و کلیساها و موسسه‌ها نباشد. دلیلش این خواهد بود که مردم عوض‌شده‌اند.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“إن المجرم الحديث قد أصبح أكثر مهارة ، أكثر طموحا ، وأكثر جرأة ، والعلم قد وضع نظاما كاملا من الأدوات المعقدة تحت تصرفه”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“Potser algun dia tots aquests conflictes s'acabaran, i no serà pas gràcies a cap gran estadista o a cap església o a cap institució com aquesta. Serà perquè la gent haurà canviat. Seran com tu, Puffin: una barreja. ¿Per què no ho hem de voler ser, mestissos? És una cosa saludable.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans