185 Quotes by Hanif Kureishi

Of course, when you love the unwell, you constantly have to ask yourself: Do I love her, or her illness? Am I her lover or her healer?

But why do people who are good at families have to be smug and assume it is the only way to live, as if everybody else is inadequate? Why can’t they be blamed for being bad at promiscuity?

For him in India the British were ridiculous, stiff, unconfident, rule-bound. And he’d made me feel that we couldn’t allow ourselves the shame of failure in front of these people. You couldn’t let the ex-colonialists see you on your knees, for that was where they expected you to be. They were exhausted now; their Empire was gone; their day was done and it was our turn.

After seeing it work for so long, I began to perceive Charlie’s charm as a method of robbing houses by persuading the owners to invite you in and take their possessions. I was in no doubt: it was robbery; there were objects of yours he wanted. And he took them. It was false and manipulative and I admired it tremendously.

I guess writing is a kind of therapy in the sense that there are things you need to say and you say them, and better out than in.

It seemed to me that the real philosophical breakthroughs of the 20th century were in terms of the understanding of language. What is language? Where does it come from, how does it work, what does it do?

Mutual transformation is rare, as good things are. In my view, a person should live as they wish until they find someone they want to be faithful to. After all, as you say, one can’t suck oneself off.

If you get depressed, you can be stuck for months; if you have an analyst, you at least have a chance of getting out of it faster.

My father was a civil servant, so having a regular job, being respectable is a big deal for me. Respectable in the sense that I support my family. That's what I mean by respectability.