Quotes from Hanif Kureishi

YOU HAVE TO FIND THE RIGHT DISTANCE BETWEEN PEOPLE. TOO CLOSE, AND THEY OVERWHELM YOU, TOO FAR AND THEY ABANDON YOU.

Beauty is the promise of happiness . . .

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

The news I bring is to say that, man being the only animal who hates himself, the likely fate of the world is total self-destruction.

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.

I'm turning off; rebelling against rebellion.

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

you can't just let people down, dammit.

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.

The madness of writing was the antidote to true madness.

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

Yet velvet curtains, soft cheese, compelling work and boys who can run full-tilt—it isn't enough. And if it isn't, it isn't. There's no living with that. 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 only see what you are inclined to see, and no more. We have to make the new.

the world is simple: it's just a matter of cafés where they like you, and cafés where they don't.

A few words of criticism and I can bear a grudge for three days at a time, convinced she is plotting against me. None of this has diminished despite years of self-analysis, therapy and "writing as healing", as some of my students used to call the attempt to make at. Nothing has cured me of myself, of the self I cling to. If you asked me, I would probably say that my problems are myself; my life is my dilemmas. I'd better enjoy them, then.

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

London seemed like a house with five thousand rooms, all different; the kick was to work out how they connected, and eventually to walk through all of them.

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

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.

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...

Mamoon went on, "The news I bring is to say that, man being the only animal who hates himself, the likely fate of the world is total self-destruction." He raised his glass. "All the best then, my friends. Here's to a happy apocalypse." "Happy apocalypse," murmured the other guests, obediently.

When Victor Hugo was buried, you couldn't find a whore in all of Paris. They were too busy paying their respects. That was a man – and he still has a show on in the West End.

Selbst die Verwandten der Berühmten [sind] berühmt, denn Ruhm [ist] erblich.

What was marriage but sex plus property.

Plato, along with the latest pope, recognised how dangerous it is to have an artist around making mischief, stirring things up with the spoon of truth and intoxicant of fantasy and magic. And so, for crossing the line, and for stealing God's fire, artists were banned, imprisoned, condemned, silenced, killed – they always would be, these sometimes Christs of the page.