Quotes by Hanif Kureishi

“Im using Mao as my inspiration. Cast away illusions. Prepare for struggle. Im back in business, baby. You dont know youre stuck until you get moving.”

“The city blew the windows of my brain wide open. But being in a place so bright, fast and brilliant made you vertiginous with possibility: it didn't necessarily help you grasp those possibilities. ...”

“Ive said before, Harry, no need to hide your light, said Alice, squeezing his hand. She giggled, Dance, monkey, dance.”

“I admired him more than anyone but I didn't wish him well. It was that I preferred him to me and wanted to be him. I coveted his talents, face, style. I wanted to wake up with them all transferred ...”

“How many artists have created while drunk, high on laudanum, opium, chloral or amphetamines? What have antidepressants ever done for culture?”

“Dear God, teach me to be careless.”

“Now, watching her sleep, and closing his eyes, he felt, in this particular intimacy - stowed beneath her duvet - that he was intruding. At the same time, he knew, settling down, you couldnt dislike...”

“Yet velvet curtains, soft cheese, compelling work and boys who can run full-tiltit 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 ...”

“I know love is dark work; you have to get your hands dirty. If you hold back, nothing interesting happens. At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they ...”

“I can only think how good life on earth can be, at times. What grief two people can give to one another! And what pleasure!”

“My son, there may be a time when I explain these things to you, because there may be a time when I understand them.”

“Security and safety were the reward of dullness.”

“When Victor Hugo was buried, you couldnt 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.”

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

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

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

“What was marriage but sex plus property.”

“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 you’re doing, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

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