Quotes from Hanif Kureishi

My guess is that she is uncomfortable in such an intransigent world but is unable to live accordingly to her own desire.

My son, there may be a time when I explain these things to you, because there may be a time when I understand them.

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!

I began to enjoy my own generosity; I felt the pleasure of pleasing others, especially as this was accompanied by money-power. I was paying for them; they were grateful, they had to be; and they could no longer see me as a failure.

Desire is naughty and doesn't conform to our ideals, which is why we have such a need of them. Desire mocks all human endeavour and makes it worthwhile. Desire is the original anarchist and undercover agent – no wonder people want it arrested and kept in a safe place. And just when we think we've got desire under control it lets us down or fills us with hope. Desire makes me laugh because it makes fools of us all.

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.

If jealousy was the vindaloo of love, I'd imagined her tongue burning, and such a fire forcing her to spill her truth.

But you're beautiful, and the beautiful should be given whatever they want. Hey, what about the ugly ones? The ugly ones. She poked her tongue out. It's their fault if their ugly. They're to be blamed, not pitied.

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

I admired him more than anyone but I didn't wish him well. It was that I preferred him to me and wanted to be him. I coveted his talents, face, style. I wanted to wake up with them all transferred to me.

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.

Truth telling, therefore, has to be an ultimate value, until it clashes with another ultimate value, pleasure, at which point, to state the obvious, there is conflict.

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.

Behind every vocation there is a fetish.

Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy.

Now, watching her sleep, and closing his eyes, he felt, in this particular intimacy - stowed beneath her duvet - that he was intruding. At the same time, he knew, settling down, you couldn´t dislike anyone you'd seen sleep

The girl had many virtues: money, a car--a gold-coloured Capri, in which she played the latest funk--a big house and a rich father. When Valentin asked, 'What does your boyfriend do?' she replied, 'But I don't have one, really.

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

The best stories are the open ones, those you don't quite understand.

If you want to know a man, see how he is in love.

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.

Of course, when you love the unwell, you constantly have to ask yourself: Do I love her, or her illness? Am I her lover or her healer?

Everything has become very conventional. You're either in or you're out. I'm with the out- with the weird, the impossible, the victimised and the broken. It's the only place to be.

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.