Hanif Kureishi Quotes

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

I’m using Mao as my inspiration. “Cast away illusions. Prepare for struggle.” I’m back in business, baby. You don’t know you’re stuck until you get moving.

Just as my body had changed at puberty, now I was developing a sense of guilt, a sense not only of how I appeared to others, but of how I appeared to myself, especially in violating self-imposed prohibitions.

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 could no longer see me as a failure.

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 understand me, and such possibility of pain, along with the implicit assumption that he wouldn't be harmed - that I pulled away.

Intelligence and effort can be no compensation for ugliness.