01UndatedThe vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it anything more than that is advertising.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
03UndatedIf 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 / quote ↗
04UndatedPeople go their whole lives wanting to be admired for their hidden qualities.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
05UndatedBut 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 blamed, not pitied.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
07UndatedHowever 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.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
09UndatedFreud 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 Freud meant something like this: for various reasons, many of them masochistic, we become involved with others who cannot possibly give what we ask for; we can wait as long as we wish, but they do not have it, and one day, if we bear to abandon our fantasy and see clearly, we might face reality straight on. We will then look elsewhere for fulfillment, to a place where our needs can, in fact, be satisfied.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
10UndatedI 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 could no longer see me as a failure.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
11UndatedI 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?Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
12UndatedSex is like art: if you know what you’re doing, you don’t know what you’re doing.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
13UndatedThere’s a lot of degradation in sex, isn’t there?”“When it’s done right.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
14UndatedYou 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 ourselves and of the world.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
16UndatedMy blackness is spreading, Alice. I’ve been seeing and hearing things that can’t be there or anywhere. At night, when I’m not hallucinating mad women, I can feel depression starting to burn me around the edges. If I sink into it, I’ll have to give this thing up and write a novel.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
17UndatedAs 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 work hard to fail in her world.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
19UndatedYes, Eleanor loathed herself and yet required praise, which she then never believed.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
21UndatedDesire is naughty and doesn't conform to our ideals, which is why we have such a need of them. Desire mocks all human endeavour and makes it worthwhile. Desire is the original anarchist and undercover agent – no wonder people want it arrested and kept in a safe place. And just when we think we've got desire under control it lets us down or fills us with hope. Desire makes me laugh because it makes fools of us all.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
22UndatedApparently, now, though, we writers and artists are not allowed to give offence. We must not question, criticise or insult the other, for fear of being hounded and murdered. These days a writer without bodyguards can hardly be considered serious. A bad review is the least of our problems.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
23UndatedWho can think of Larkin now without considering his fondness for the buttocks of schoolgirls and paranoid hatred of blacks … Or Eric Gill’s copulations with more or less every member of his family, including the dog? Proust had rats tortured, and donated his family furniture to brothels; Dickens walled up his wife and kept her from her children; Lillian Hellman lied. While Sartre lived with his mother, Simone de Beauvoir pimped babes for him; he envied Camus, before trashing him. John Cheever loitered in toilets, nostrils aflare, before returning to his wife. P.G. Wodehouse made broadcasts for the Nazis; Mailer stabbed his second wife. Two of Ted Hughes’s lovers had killed themselves. And as for Styron, Salinger, Saroyan … Literature was a killing field; no decent person had ever picked up a pen.Hanif Kureishi / quote ↗
