Quotes from Hanif Kureishi

Born for disappointment, she only wanted what I couldn't give.

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.

I am dust and my story ends here.

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.

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.

Children, who have yet to learn our ways, are notoriously promiscuous in their affection. They'll sit on anyone's knee.

I know you so well, and you'll feel guilty, simplifying everything, putting the emphasis here or there according to your interest.

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

There's a lot of degradation in sex, isn't there?" "When it's done right.

People go their whole lives wanting to be admired for their hidden qualities.

The world is made from our imagination ; our eyes enliven it , as our hands give it shape.Wanting makes it thrive; meaning is what you put in , not what you extract. you can only see what you are inclined to see, and no more. We have to make the new.

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

And if anyone manages to get their sexuality and their love lined up together, they are indeed lucky. It is as rare as a fine spring day in the country.

Mutual transformation is rare, as good things are. In my view, a person should live as they wish until they find someone they want to be faithful to. After all, as you say, one can't suck oneself off.

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

But to be able to bear one's own mind, to wait while the inner storm of intolerable thoughts blows itself out, leaving one to contemplate the debris with some understanding--that is an enviable state of mind.

The truth is a tattoo on your forehead. You can't see it yourself. I am your mirror.

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

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.

It's frustration which makes creativity possible.

That's where the public like their artists—exposed, trousers down, arse up, doing a long stretch among serial killers, and shitting in front of strangers. That'll teach 'em to think their talent makes them better than mediocre no-brain tax-paying wage slaves like us.

Women are attracted to artists, of course, as they are to doctors and prisoners on death row. The powerful and the vulnerable. If you want to continue to get laid, particularly as you get older, that's where to head, boy.

In chili's hand were his car keys, Ray-bans and Marlboros, without which he wouldn't leave his bathroom. Chili drank only black coffee and neat Jack Daniel's; his suits were Boss, his underwear Calvin Klein, his actor Pacino. His barber shook his hand, his accountant took him to dinner, his drug dealer would come to him at all hours and accept his checks.

I can't quite count the ways in which we hurt one another. It was the means by which we tried to help one another—me, turning her into a patient, her, turning me into a dull authority—which were as bad as, if not worse, than our actual abuses.