Nocturnes Quotes

“She might be a great person, but life's so much bigger than just loving someone.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“But you play that passage like it's the -memory- of love. You're so young, yet you know desertion, abandonment. That's why you play that third movement the way you do. Most cellists, they play it with joy. But for you, it's not about joy, it's about the memory of a joyful time that's gone for ever.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“If I'm alone at home, I get increasingly restless, bothered by the idea that I'm missing some crucial encounter out there somewhere. But if I'm left by myself in someone else's place, I often find myself a nice sense of peace engulfing me. I love sinking into an unfamiliar sofa with whatever book happens to be lying nearby.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“Plenty of couples, they start off loving each other, then get tired of each other, end up hating each other. Sometimes though it goes the other way.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“If disappointments do come, you will carry on still. You will say, just as he does, I am so lucky.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“You'll figure it out! You get on your plane and I'll get on mine. And we'll see which one crashes!”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“She thinks I've let myself down,' he was saying. 'But I haven't. I'm doing perfectly okay. Endless horizons are all very well when you're young. But get to your age, you've got to ... you've got to get some perspective. That's what kept going round in my head whenever she got unbearable about it. Perspective, she needs perspective. And I kept saying to myself, look, I'm doing okay. Look at loads of other people, people we know. Look at Ray. Look what a pig's arse he's making of his life. She needs perspective.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“You know, Raymond, when you're at a party, at a dance. And it's maybe a slow dance, and you're with the person you really want to be with, and the rest of the room's supposed to vanish. But somehow it doesn't. It just doesn't. You know there's no one half as nice as the guy in your arms. And yet.... well, there are all these people everywhere else in the room. They don't leave you alone. They keep shouting and waving and doing daft things just to attract your attention. "Oi! How can you be satisfied with that?1 You can do much better! Look over here!" It's like they're shouting things like that all the time. And so it gets hopeless, you just can't dance quietly with your guy. Do you know what I mean, Raymond?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“But for another few minutes at least, we were
safe, and we kept dancing under the starlit sky.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“I could suddenly see something," he explained to us. "A garden I'd not yet entered. There it was, in the distance. There were things in the way. But for the first time, there it was. A garden I'd never seen before.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“But you play that passage like it's the memory of love. You're so young, and yet you know desertion, abandonment. That's why you play that third movement the way you do. Most cellists, they play it with joy. But for you, it's not about joy, it's about the memory of a joyful time that's gone for ever.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“I now realized this woman was livid with anger. Not the sort that suddenly hits you then drains away. No. This woman, I could tell had been in a kind of white heat for sometime. It’s a sort of anger that arrives and then stays put at a constant level like a bad headache never quite peaking and refusing to find a proper outlet.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“Ésa es una lección que se olvida con frecuencia: no intentes comprender, no deduzcas, no interpretes: eso lo puede hacer cualquiera en una oficina a mil kilómetros de distancia. Da igual que la situación te resulte ininteligible. Cuenta lo que ves, lo cercano, lo comprobable. Ya está.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“Hace ya algún tiempo que me cuesta relajarme en mi propia casa. Si estoy solo, me pongo cada vez más nervioso, fastidiado por la idea de que me estoy perdiendo un encuentro crucial en otra parte. Pero si me quedo solo en casa ajena, a menudo me inunda una agradable sensación de paz.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“La vida ya nos trae muchos desengaños por sí sola. Si encima tiene esos sueños...”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“Cómo los amigos del alma de hoy son mañana personas extrañas perdidas, dispersas por Europa, que tocan el tema de El padrino o «Las hojas muertas» en plazas y cafés que no visitaremos nunca.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“Chân trời tít tắp là một điều tốt đẹp khi anh còn trẻ. Nhưng đến tuổi này rồi thì anh phải... anh phải có được một góc nhìn mới.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“You're just starting out. Don't worry about audience size. That's not why you're performing.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

“At that moment, the piazza was pleasantly cool—the cafe end remains shaded for much of the morning—and the paving stones were still wet from the city workers’ hoses.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall