Kazuo Ishiguro: I kind of experimented with this idea — my wife colluded in this — that I should actually cut myself off from the outside world for four weeks, as much as was possible. So I didn’t answer the phone. I didn’t go outside. I had an hour off for lunch, two hours for dinner. Then I would go back to work again. I think I used to just get Sundays off. But the idea was, “What would happen if I absolutely incarcerated myself into a tiny room? Would the fictional world become more real than the world outside?” I don’t know why the word “crash” was used, but several other writers picked up on this, and they started to say, “I might try a ‘crash’ now.” There’s no logic to it. But the first time I tried it was for The Remains of the Day, and I think it worked very well, in that, in those four weeks, I think I had all the foundation for the book. Then I had to kind of go back and figure things out, make it more stylish, get that voice right. But all the important things, all the important central artistic decisions, were made in those four weeks.