Hanif Kureishi Quotes

What was marriage but sex plus property.

As it was, she always did whatever occurred to her, which was, admittedly, not difficult for someone...

Security and safety were the reward of dullness.

Yet velvet curtains, soft cheese, compelling work and boys who can run full-tilt—it isn't enough. An...

Just as my body had changed at puberty, now I was developing a sense of guilt, a sense not only of h...

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

Freud wrote that love involves the undervaluation of reality and the overvaluation of the desired ob...

I can only think how good life on earth can be, at times. What grief two people can give to one anot...

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

Dear God, teach me to be careless.

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

I know love is dark work; you have to get your hands dirty. If you hold back, nothing interesting ha...

Desire is naughty and doesn't conform to our ideals, which is why we have such a need of them. Desir...

If you never left anything or anyone there would be no room for the new. Naturally, to move on is an...

Falling in love was simple; one had only to yield. Digesting another person, however, and sustaining...

Now, watching her sleep, and closing his eyes, he felt, in this particular intimacy - stowed beneath...

However angry I was with him, however much I wanted to humiliate Terry, I suddenly saw such humanity...

He died at the wrong time, when there was much to be clarified and established. They hadn’t even sta...

Maybe you never stop feeling like an eight-year-old in front of your parents. You resolve to be your...

I began to enjoy my own generosity; I felt the pleasure of pleasing others, especially as this was a...

But you're beautiful, and the beautiful should be given whatever they want.""Hey, what about the ugl...

I didn't want to be educated. It wasn't the right time of my life for concentration, it really wasn'...

The city blew the windows of my brain wide open. But being in a place so bright, fast and brilliant ...

Yes, Eleanor loathed herself and yet required praise, which she then never believed.

I admired him more than anyone but I didn't wish him well. It was that I preferred him to me and wan...

You see, I have come to believe in self-help, individual initiative, the love of what you do, and th...

There’s a lot of degradation in sex, isn’t there?”“When it’s done right.

How many artists have created while drunk, high on laudanum, opium, chloral or amphetamines? What ha...

Plato, along with the latest pope, recognised how dangerous it is to have an artist around making mi...

If there’s no sacrifice, there’s no love.

Apparently, now, though, we writers and artists are not allowed to give offence. We must not questio...

The writer, indeed every real artist, was the devil, rivalling God in creativity, trying even to sur...

Who can think of Larkin now without considering his fondness for the buttocks of schoolgirls and par...

It’s frustration which makes creativity possible.

I’ve said before, Harry, no need to hide your light,” said Alice, squeezing his hand. She giggled, “...

Mamoon went on, “The news I bring is to say that, man being the only animal who hates himself, the l...

He was, after all, just a man. And not merely a narrative.

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

Popeye the Sailor Man has more cultural longevity. Only women and poofs read or write now. Otherwise...

My blackness is spreading, Alice. I’ve been seeing and hearing things that can’t be there or anywher...

When Victor Hugo was buried, you couldn’t find a whore in all of Paris. They were too busy paying th...

Old age is the new childhood.

Whoever thought that pleasure makes you happy?

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

Act – make an event. Smash the coordinates and see where the smithereens fly. Let in the madness, an...

Sex is like art: if you know what you’re doing, you don’t know what you’re doing.

Intelligence and effort can be no compensation for ugliness.

I am dust and my story ends here.

I have learned that the libido, like Elvis and jealousy, never dies. I know copulators of eighty-fiv...

I’m using Mao as my inspiration. “Cast away illusions. Prepare for struggle.” I’m back in business, ...

I don’t like being left for long struggling with my dangerous self.

The past looks worse the closer you look at it.

The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it anything more than that is...