Quotes from Hanif Kureishi

behind him a string of broken women has hardly been alive.

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

The mad were put in asylums, but the sane are worse off in their offices.

I have a rule about no material being sacred.

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.

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.

My father had the right idea. Begin from an assumption of insanity and then laugh, where possible.

However angry I was with him, however much I wanted to humiliate Terry, I suddenly saw such humanity in his eyes, and in the way he tried to smile - such innocence in the way he wanted to understand me, and such possibility of pain, along with the implicit assumption that he wouldn't be harmed - that I pulled away.

She screamed—more like a week. She informed me that a woman who doesn't have an orgasm a day will get dry skin, and lines. According to her you should rub your lover's semen into your forehead.

Is she always elusive?" "Her whole life's a no-show.

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?

One day we are children, our faces are bright and open. We want to know how machines work. We are in love with polar bears. The next day we're throwing ourselves down the stairs, drunk and weeping. Our lives are over. We hate life and we hate death.

Talent might be a gift but it still has to be cultivated. The imagination is like a fire or furnace: it has to be stoked, fed and attended to. One thing sets another ablaze. Keep it going.

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.

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

Harry had loved most of the arts long enough to know that artists had to be excused failings which would condemn the general population.

Intreurig is deze avond, want ik ga weg en kom niet meer terug.

The point is, Harry, if I'm not to find you abhorrent, there will have to be more reciprocity all round. Particularly from your side.

PAPA: This damn country has done us in. That's why I'm like this. We should be there. Home. NASSER: But that country has been sodomized by religion. It is beginning to interfere with the making of money. Compared with everywhere, it is a little heaven here.

Popeye the Sailor Man has more cultural longevity. Only women and poofs read or write now. Otherwise, these days, no sooner has someone been sodomised by a close relative than they think they can write a memoir. The game's up.

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.

Who doesn't love cock?

Those magical fucks, when everything else falls away.

Women only wear beautiful clothes so that men will want to remove them.