Kureishi Quotes & Sayings

What was marriage but sex plus property. — Hanif Kureishi

Sometimes I felt the whole world was converging on this little room. And as I became more intoxicated and frustrated I'd throw open the bedroom window as the dawn came up, and look across the gardens, lawns, greenhouses, sheds and curtained windows. I wanted my life to begin now, at this instant, just when I was ready for it. — Hanif Kureishi

I was falling in love with myself. Not that beauty, or life itself, means much if you're in a room on your own. Heaven is other people. — Hanif Kureishi

I'm interested in philosophical psychology, people like Nietzsche, Freud, Alcan, Foucault, Derrida. — Hanif Kureishi

This ghost of a mother had begun to ask him questions about who he was and who he truly loved. Was he capable of love? — Hanif Kureishi

If there's no sacrifice, there's no love. — Hanif Kureishi

You see, I have come to believe in self-help, individual initiative, the love of what you do, and the full development of all individuals. I am constantly disappointed by how little we expect of ourselves and of the world. — Hanif Kureishi

But what about ugly bastards? What about us? What about our rights to be kissed? — Hanif Kureishi

My pleasures disappeared with my vices. — Hanif Kureishi

After a bit you realize there's only one invaluable commodity. Not gold or love, but time. — Hanif Kureishi

I've learned that unfeeling, bloodsucking men like you need to reduce women to manageable cliches, even to destroy them, for the sake of control. — Hanif Kureishi

I love the razor's edge. I want to be cut open. My terror is of a bourgeois, ordinary life. I can't bear the everyday constraint. I believe that ordinariness would put out my spark, such as it is. — Hanif Kureishi

After seeing it work for so long, I began to perceive Charlie's charm as a method of robbing houses by persuading the owners to invite you in and take their possessions. I was in no doubt: it was robbery; there were objects of yours he wanted. And he took them. It was false and manipulative and I admired it tremendously. — Hanif Kureishi

You can't spend your life beating yourself up for something that happened yesterday. You die if you don't follow your desire. — Hanif Kureishi

For him, the writer should be the very devil, a disturber of dreams and wrecker of fatuous utopias, the bringer-in of reality, and rival of God in his wish to make worlds. — Hanif Kureishi

I didn't want to be educated. It wasn't the right time of my life for concentration, it really wasn't. The spirit of the age among the people I knew manifested itself as general drift and idleness. We didn't want money. What for? We could get by, living off parents, friends or the State And if we were going to be bored, and we were usually bored, rarely being self-motivated, we could at least be bored on our own terms, lying smashed on mattresses in ruined houses rather than working in the machine. I didn't want to work in a place where I couldn't wear my fur coat. — Hanif Kureishi

I'm always writing. I'm an obsessive. It's not because I'm a disciplined person. It's because I'm crazy about it. — Hanif Kureishi

Falling in love was simple; one had only to yield. Digesting another person, however, and sustaining love, was bloody work, and not a soft job. — Hanif Kureishi

The "master" would always be the one who could wait without anxiety; — Hanif Kureishi

No amount of promises can guarantee love — Hanif Kureishi

If you get depressed, you can be stuck for months; if you have an analyst, you at least have a chance of getting out of it faster. — Hanif Kureishi

You're one of those old-fashioned, romantic men for whom women aren't really there unless you decide we are. — Hanif Kureishi

Nothing consoles like the blues. — Hanif Kureishi

Our lives can only be lived forward and understood backwards. Living a life and understanding it occupy different dimensions. — Hanif Kureishi

Fundamentalism is dictatorship of the mind — Hanif Kureishi

I've never had any desire to be good. I don't like goodness particularly. — Hanif Kureishi

He felt like a criminal, though the only laws he'd broken were his own, and he wasn't sure which ones they were. — Hanif Kureishi

You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them. — Hanif Kureishi

My blackness is spreading, Alice. I've been seeing and hearing things that can't be there or anywhere. At night, when I'm not hallucinating mad women, I can feel depression starting to burn me around the edges. If I sink into it, I'll have to give this thing up and write a novel. — Hanif Kureishi

It seemed to me that the real philosophical breakthroughs of the 20th century were in terms of the understanding of language. What is language? Where does it come from, how does it work, what does it do? — Hanif Kureishi

This was the English passion, not for self-improvement or culture or wit, but for DIY, Do It Yourself, for bigger and better houses with more mod cons, the painstaking accumulation of comfort and, with it, status - the concrete display of earned cash. — Hanif Kureishi

Apparently, now, though, we writers and artists are not allowed to give offence. We must not question, criticise or insult the other, for fear of being hounded and murdered. These days a writer without bodyguards can hardly be considered serious. A bad review is the least of our problems. — Hanif Kureishi

England's a nice place if you're rich, but otherwise it's a fucking swamp of prejudice, class confusion, the whole thing. — Hanif Kureishi

Harvey [Weinstein] didn't want to release [MY SON THE FANATIC]; he held it for two years because he wanted a happy ending, although I don't know what that means. Does that mean the taxi driver leaves his wife or doesn't leave his wife? I think it has a happy ending. — Hanif Kureishi

As suburbs go, Bromley's not bad. But as David Bowie and Hanif Kureishi have observed, you do want to get out of there quickly. — Tibor Fischer

How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs. — Hanif Kureishi

At the deepest level people are madder than they want to believe. You will find that they fear being eaten, and are alarmed by their desire to devour others. — Hanif Kureishi

For those of you curious about the menu, I am drinking tear soup. — Hanif Kureishi

Any Advance in wisdom requires a good dose of shamelessness. Intimacy — Hanif Kureishi

And silence, like darkness, can be kind; it, too, is a language — Hanif Kureishi

All sex, and indeed all pleasure, must include a poisonous drop of perversion, of devilish transgression - of evil, even - for it to be worth getting into bed for. — Hanif Kureishi

I am dust and my story ends here. — Hanif Kureishi

Not everything can be achieved alone. — Hanif Kureishi

As a Newbody, however, I began to like the pornographic circus of rough sex; the stuff that resembled some of the modern dance I had seen, animalistic, without talk. I begged to be turned into meat, held down, tied, blindfolded, slapped, pulled and strangled, entirely merged in the physical, all my swirling selves sucked into orgasm. — Hanif Kureishi

But in love each moment is magnified, and every gesture, word and syllable is examined like a speech by the President. — Hanif Kureishi

The questions had become: What can we forgive in others? How far do they have to go before we lose faith in them? — Hanif Kureishi

Someone to whom jokes are never told soon contracts enthusiasm deficiency. — Hanif Kureishi

Security and safety were the reward of dullness. — Hanif Kureishi

Surely you've noticed that most people live without love, spending their lives trying to find people they're not turned on by. — Hanif Kureishi

The city blew the windows of my brain wide open. But being in a place so bright, fast and brilliant made you vertiginous with possibility: it didn't necessarily help you grasp those possibilities. I still had no idea what I was going to do. I felt directionless and lost in the crowd. I couldn't yet see how the city worked, but I began to find out. — Hanif Kureishi

The past looks worse the closer you look at it. — Hanif Kureishi

Suddenly I shouted into the night air. 'Yes, yes, yes, it is true!
And now the world had some tension in it; now it twanged and vibrated with meaning and possibility! 'Yes, yes, fucking yes! — Hanif Kureishi

Those magical fucks, when everything else falls away. — Hanif Kureishi

People who were only ever half right about things drove me mad. I hated the flood of opinion, the certainty, the easy talk about Cuba and Russia and the economy, because beneath the hard structure of words was an abyss of ignorance and not-knowing; and, in a sense, of not wanting to know. — Hanif Kureishi

A monster is someone who's being monstered. — Hanif Kureishi

How utterly our past suffuses us. We live in all our days at once. — Hanif Kureishi

Dear God, teach me to be careless. — Hanif Kureishi

He had some impression that happiness was beyond him and everything was coming down, and that life could not be grasped but only lived. — Hanif Kureishi

However, Harry, my clock has stopped. The embalmer is rolling up his sleeves. Even as we speak, seventy-two virgins are slipping into schoolgirl uniforms for me. You must live, and I confirm: always put your penis first. — Hanif Kureishi

Being in love means being at the mercy of someone's childhood. — Hanif Kureishi

He died at the wrong time, when there was much to be clarified and established. They hadn't even started to be grown-ups together. There was this piece of heaven, this little girl he'd carried around the shop on his shoulders; and then one day she was gone, replaced by a foreigner, an uncooperative woman he didn't know how to speak to. Being so confused, so weak, so in love, he chose strength and drove her away from himself. The last years he spent wondering where she'd gone, and slowly came to realise that she would never return, and that the husband he'd chosen for her was an idiot. — Hanif Kureishi

As it was, she always did whatever occurred to her, which was, admittedly, not difficult for someone in her position, coming from a background where rick of failure was minimal; in fact, you had to work hard to fail in her world. — Hanif Kureishi

Watching Jamila sometimes made me think the world was divided into three sorts of people: those who knew what they wanted to do; those (the unhappiest) who never knew what their purpose in life was; and those who found out later on. I was in the last category, I reckoned, which didn't stop me wishing I'd been born into the first. — Hanif Kureishi

I once overheard a young white man at a book festival say to his friend, "Have you read the new Kureishi? Same old thing - loads of Indian people." To which you want to reply, "Have you read the new Franzen? Same old thing - loads of white people. — Zadie Smith

I don't have a deep link with England like, say, Jonathan Coe or Hanif Kureishi might demonstrate. For me, it is like a mythical place. — Kazuo Ishiguro

All the same, my depression and self-hatred, my desire to mutilate myself with broken bottles, my numbness and crying fits, my inability to get out of bed for days and days, the feeling of the world moving in to crush me, went on and on. But I knew I wouldn't go mad, even if that release, that letting-go, was a freedom I desired. I was waiting for myself to heal. — Hanif Kureishi

Women are brought up to think of others. [ ... ] When I start to think of myself I feel sick. — Hanif Kureishi

The artist was the proxy, the brave one, the one who spoke, was thanked, and who paid the price. — Hanif Kureishi

I'm turning off; rebelling against rebellion. — Hanif Kureishi

Doesn't civilisation mean keeping your temper when there is no reason for restraint? — Hanif Kureishi

NASSER: In this damn country that we hate and love, you can get anything you want. It's all spread out and availble. That's why I believe in England. You just have to know how to squeeze the tits of the system. — Hanif Kureishi

You see people truly when they enjoy the most. — Hanif Kureishi

How do I like to write? withe a soft pencil and a hard dick, not the other way round.
I like the paper of all kinds : creamy, white, yellow, thick, thin, lined, plain. In my cupboard I have at least fifty notebooks, each of which, at the time of purchase, filled me with excitement of what might be said of new thoughts discovered ... and then-nothing. — Hanif Kureishi

Apparently the town, a triumph of post-war socialist planning was a sewer, full of tattooed beasts and violent zombies, with vomit and blood frothing in the gutters. I couldn't wait to see it. — Hanif Kureishi

It's frustration which makes creativity possible. — Hanif Kureishi

I don't like being left for long struggling with my dangerous self. — Hanif Kureishi

The interesting people you wanted to be with - their minds were unusual, you saw things freshly with them and all was not deadness and repetition. — Hanif Kureishi

Does sex make life worth living? Didn't you say, the other day, 'Our lives are only as good as our orgasms'? — Hanif Kureishi

Without parents who had time for her, at an early age she had made herself self-sufficient. — Hanif Kureishi

Because it is about that which we can't be prepared for - the great test we men have passed before, but have no way of knowing we will pass again. — Hanif Kureishi

Harry had loved most of the arts long enough to know that artists had to be excused failings which would condemn the general population. The artist was the proxy, the brave one, the one who spoke, was thanked, and who paid the price. Artists were allowed, indeed encouraged, to lead more libidinous lives on behalf of others who had, of necessity, to leave their jouissance, at the door while they worked. — Hanif Kureishi

I'm using Mao as my inspiration. "Cast away illusions. Prepare for struggle." I'm back in business, baby. You don't know you're stuck until you get moving. — Hanif Kureishi

Sex is like art: if you know what you're doing, you don't know what you're doing. — Hanif Kureishi

Growing old isn't for pussies. — Hanif Kureishi

I can't sleep with you tonight, baby, my head's all messed up, you've no idea. It's somewhere else and it's full of voices and songs and bad things ... — Hanif Kureishi

Desire, like the dead or an unpleasant meal, would keep returning
it was ultimately indigestible. — Hanif Kureishi

At detumescence, after all, there is conversation, that is where love begins. — Hanif Kureishi

I've said it's over for the white races, an obvious truth which caused much agitation amongst the journalists. The rich will rule as usual; they come in all colours, particularly yellow. — Hanif Kureishi

Illegal drugs are better for you than the legal stuff. How many artists have created while drunk, high on laudanum, opium, chloral, or amphetamines? What have antidepressants ever done for culture? — Hanif Kureishi

Intelligence and effort can be no compensation for ugliness. — Hanif Kureishi

But Harry wondered if he might be getting too old for the dispiriting adventure that seemed to inevitably accompany the need for human contact. — Hanif Kureishi

Marriage domesticates sex but frees love. It is unsuitable as a solution to human need, but as with capitalism, the alternatives are much worse. — Hanif Kureishi

Transgression affirms the very rules it intends to flout. Nothing supports the norm like deviation. — Hanif Kureishi

Behind every vocation there is a fetish. — Hanif Kureishi

In our offices and places of work we love to tell others what to do.We denigrate them.We compare their work unfavourably with our own.We are always in competition.We show off and gossip.Our dream is of being well treated and we dream of treating others badly ... — Hanif Kureishi

You know, when you end a relationship and say you fell out of love, you actually mean you were never really in love. The past is a river, not a statue. — Hanif Kureishi

Freud wrote that love involves the undervaluation of reality and the overvaluation of the desired object. While the correct valuation of a person is an odd, if not impossible idea, we might say Freud meant something like this: for various reasons, many of them masochistic, we become involved with others who cannot possibly give what we ask for; we can wait as long as we wish, but they do not have it, and one day, if we bear to abandon our fantasy and see clearly, we might face reality straight on. We will then look elsewhere for fulfillment, to a place where our needs can, in fact, be satisfied. — Hanif Kureishi

I've said before, Harry, no need to hide your light," said Alice, squeezing his hand. She giggled, "Dance, monkey, dance. — Hanif Kureishi

Nothing can be repaired or advanced but only accepted — Hanif Kureishi

These days everyone was insisting on their identity, coming out as a man, woman, gay, black, Jew - brandishing whichever features they could claim, as if without a tag they wouldn't be human. — Hanif Kureishi