185 Quotes by Hanif Kureishi

I’m always writing. I’m an obsessive. It’s not because I’m a disciplined person. It’s because I’m crazy about it.

The immigrant is the Everyman of the twentieth century.

Harry had loved most of the arts long enough to know that artists had to be excused failings which would condemn the general population.

For him, the writer should be the very devil, a disturber of dreams and wrecker of fatuous utopias, the bringer-in of reality, and rival of God in his wish to make worlds.

I know you so well, and you’ll feel guilty, simplifying everything, putting the emphasis here or there according to your interest.

Apparently the town, a triumph of post-war socialist planning was a sewer, full of tattooed beasts and violent zombies, with vomit and blood frothing in the gutters. I couldn’t wait to see it.

The truth is a tattoo on your forehead. You can’t see it yourself. I am your mirror.

Most people don’t know how to maximise their pleasure, they sexualise their pain. Surely you’ve noticed that most people live without love, spending their lives trying to find people they’re not turned on by.

Because it is about that which we can’t be prepared for – the great test we men have passed before, but have no way of knowing we will pass again.