Hanif Kureishi Quotes

Quotes about:

Desire Intimacy Pleasure

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

Hanif Kureishi

Mean, Being In Love, Childhood

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If you want something badly enough, you make arrangements. If you don't want it badly enough, you make excuses.

Hanif Kureishi

Want Something, Excuse, Enough

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How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.

Hanif Kureishi

Important, Belief, Illusion

Hanif Kureishi (2010). “Intimacy”, p.83, Faber & Faber

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England has become a squalid, uncomfortable, ugly place ... an intolerant, racist, homophobic, narrow-minded, authoritarian, rat-hole run by vicious, suburban-minded, materialistic philistines.

Hanif Kureishi

Running, Insulting, Racist

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And silence, like darkness, can be kind; it, too, is a language.

Hanif Kureishi

Silence, Darkness, Be Kind

Hanif Kureishi (2002). “Intimacy and Midnight All Day: A Novel and Stories”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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These days everyone was insisting on their identity, coming out as a man, woman, gay, black, Jew - brandishing whichever features they could claim, as if without a tag they wouldn’t be human.

Hanif Kureishi

Gay, Men, Black

Hanif Kureishi (2009). “The Black Album”, p.66, Faber & Faber

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Our lives can only be lived forward and understood backwards. Living a life and understanding it occupy different dimensions.

Hanif Kureishi

Understanding, Different, Dimensions

Hanif Kureishi (2016). “Love in a Blue Time”, p.122, Faber & Faber

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I don't want to be loved. I want to be desired. Love is safety, but desire is foul.

Hanif Kureishi

Love Is, Safety, Desire

Hanif Kureishi (2009). “Something to Tell You: A Novel”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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

Hanif Kureishi

World, Advertising, Vocation

Hanif Kureishi (2014). “The Word and the Bomb”, p.5, Faber & Faber

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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.

Hanif Kureishi

Thinking, People, Wish

Hanif Kureishi (2009). “The Buddha of Suburbia”, p.90, Faber & Faber

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At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you, too far and they abandon you. How to hold them in the right relation?

Hanif Kureishi

Distance, People, Relation

Hanif Kureishi (2002). “Intimacy and Midnight All Day: A Novel and Stories”, p.77, Simon and Schuster

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I guess writing is a kind of therapy in the sense that there are things you need to say and you say them, and better out than in.

Hanif Kureishi

Writing, Needs, Kind

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Nothing can be repaired or advanced but only accepted

Hanif Kureishi

Accepted

Hanif Kureishi (2016). “Love in a Blue Time”, p.172, Faber & Faber

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Without love, most of life remains concealed. Nothing is as fascinating as love, unfortunately.

Hanif Kureishi

Remains, Without Love, Concealed

Hanif Kureishi (2002). “Intimacy and Midnight All Day: A Novel and Stories”, p.77, Simon and Schuster

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Harvey [Weinstein] didn't want to release [MY SON THE FANATIC]; he held it for two years because he wanted a happy ending, although I don't know what that means. Does that mean the taxi driver leaves his wife or doesn't leave his wife? I think it has a happy ending.

Hanif Kureishi

Mean, Son, Thinking

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

Hanif Kureishi

Hate, Loving Someone, Intimacy

Hanif Kureishi (2002). “Intimacy and Midnight All Day: A Novel and Stories”, p.88, Simon and Schuster

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Dear God, teach me to be careless.

Hanif Kureishi

Dear God, Teach, Dear

Hanif Kureishi (2002). “Intimacy and Midnight All Day: A Novel and Stories”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

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What a quality of innocence people have when they don't expect to be harmed.

Hanif Kureishi

People, Quality, Innocence

Hanif Kureishi (2010). “Intimacy”, p.9, Faber & Faber

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...I love 'yes.' It's practically the most interesting word of all, don't you think?" Like a hinge opening a door outward. Yes, yes, yes.

Hanif Kureishi

Thinking, Doors, Interesting

Hanif Kureishi (2009). “The Black Album with My Son the Fanatic: A Novel and a Short Story”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

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Fundamentalism is dictatorship of the mind

Hanif Kureishi

Mind, Dictatorship, Fundamentalism

Hanif Kureishi (2009). “The Black Album with My Son the Fanatic: A Novel and a Short Story”, p.308, Simon and Schuster

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At the deepest level people are madder than they want to believe. You will find that they fear being eaten, and are alarmed by their desire to devour others.

Hanif Kureishi

Believe, People, Desire

Hanif Kureishi (2009). “Something to Tell You: A Novel”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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Please remove your watch,' he said. 'In my domain time isn't a factor.

Hanif Kureishi

Watches, Domain, Said

Hanif Kureishi (2009). “The Buddha of Suburbia”, p.14, Faber & Faber

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If you never left anything or anyone there would be no room for the new. Naturally, to move on is an infidelity -- to others, to the past, to old notions of oneself. Perhaps every day should contain at least one essential infidelity or necessary betrayal. It would be an optimistic, hopeful act, guaranteeing belief in the future -- a declaration that things can be not only different but better.

Hanif Kureishi

Betrayal, Moving, Optimistic

Hanif Kureishi (2010). “Intimacy”, p.7, Faber & Faber

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Soon we will be strangers. No, we can never be that. Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be dangerous acquaintances with a history.

Hanif Kureishi

Hurt, Future, History

Hanif Kureishi (2002). “Intimacy and Midnight All Day: A Novel and Stories”, p.10, Simon and Schuster

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Why do people who are good at families have to be smug and assume it is the only way to live. … Why can’t they be blamed for being bad at promiscuity?

Hanif Kureishi

People, Way To Live, Assuming

Hanif Kureishi (2002). “Intimacy and Midnight All Day: A Novel and Stories”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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Hanif Kureishi

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Born: December 5, 1954
Occupation: Playwright
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