Quotes by Hanif Kureishi

“What was marriage but sex plus property.”

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

“Freud wrote that love involves the undervaluation of reality and the overvaluation of the desired object. While the correct valuation of a person is an odd, if not impossible idea, we might say Fre...”

“You see, I have come to believe in self-help, individual initiative, the love of what you do, and the full development of all individuals. I am constantly disappointed by how little we expect of ou...”

“I began to enjoy my own generosity; I felt the pleasure of pleasing others, especially as this was accompanied by money-power. I was paying for them; they were grateful, they had to be; and they co...”

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

“But you're beautiful, and the beautiful should be given whatever they want.""Hey, what about the ugly ones?""The ugly ones." She poked her tongue out. "It's their fault if their ugly. They're to be...”

“Its frustration which makes creativity possible.”

“I have learned that the libido, like Elvis and jealousy, never dies. I know copulators of eighty-five. Who said you need an erection, a body or an orgasm for sex?”

“Sex is like art: if you know what youre doing, you dont know what youre doing.”

“Theres a lot of degradation in sex, isnt there?When its done right.”

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

“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 contai...”

“My blackness is spreading, Alice. Ive been seeing and hearing things that cant be there or anywhere. At night, when Im not hallucinating mad women, I can feel depression starting to burn me around ...”

“Intelligence and effort can be no compensation for ugliness.”

“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 understan...”

“Falling in love was simple; one had only to yield. Digesting another person, however, and sustaining love, was bloody work, and not a soft job.”

“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, f...”

“The writer, indeed every real artist, was the devil, rivalling God in creativity, trying even to surpass him. God was surely mans most fatal creation, the devils kitsch bitch. It was God, with his ...”

“As it was, she always did whatever occurred to her, which was, admittedly, not difficult for someone in her position, coming from a background where rick of failure was minimal; in fact, you had to...”