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I didn't want to be educated. It wasn't the right time of my life for concentration, it really wasn't. The spirit of the age among the people I knew manifested itself as general drift and idleness. We didn't want money. What for? We could get by, living off parents, friends or the State And if we were going to be bored, and we were usually bored, rarely being self-motivated, we could at least be bored on our own terms, lying smashed on mattresses in ruined houses rather than working in the machine. I didn't want to work in a place where I couldn't wear my fur coat.

I didn't want to be educated. It wasn't the right time of my life for concentration, it really wasn't. The spirit of the age among the people I knew manifested itself as general drift and idleness. We didn't want money. What for? We could get by, living off parents, friends or the State And if we were going to be bored, and we were usually bored, rarely being self-motivated, we could at least be bored on our own terms, lying smashed on mattresses in ruined houses rather than working in the machine. I didn't want to work in a place where I couldn't wear my fur coat.

Approximate author period: c. 1976 AD · modern

Meaning not yet available

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Hanif Kureishi
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1976 AD · modern
Approximate author-period evidence for Hanif Kureishi: documented activity in 1976. Wikidata Q325936, inspected 2026-10-08. Not a quotation composition date or independent verification of attribution. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q325936 (accessed 2026-10-08).
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 277735; supplied attribution, independently unverified

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.