Hanif Kureishi

But 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.

People go their whole lives wanting to be admired for their hidden qualities.

If 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.

You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them.

The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it anything more than that is advertising.

When Victor Hugo was buried, you couldn__ find a whore in all of Paris. They were too busy paying their respects. That was a man _ and he still has a show on in the West End.

Security and safety were the reward of dullness.

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

Now, watching her sleep, and closing his eyes, he felt, in this particular intimacy - stowed beneath her duvet - that he was intruding. At the same time, he knew, settling down, you couldn´t dislike anyone you'd seen sleep

I can only think how good life on earth can be, at times. What grief two people can give to one another! And what pleasure!

Yet velvet curtains, soft cheese, compelling work and boys who can run full-tilt__t isn't enough. And if it isn't, it isn't. There's no living with that. The world is made from our imagination; our eyes enliven it, as our hands give it shape. Wanting makes it thrive; meaning is what you put in, not what you extract. You only see what you are inclined to see, and no more. We have to make the new.

Dear God, teach me to be careless.

I know love is dark work; you have to get your hands dirty. If you hold back, nothing interesting happens. At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you; too far and they abandon you. How to hold them in the right relation?

How many artists have created while drunk, high on laudanum, opium, chloral or amphetamines? What have antidepressants ever done for culture?

I admired him more than anyone but I didn't wish him well. It was that I preferred him to me and wanted to be him. I coveted his talents, face, style. I wanted to wake up with them all transferred to me.

I__e said before, Harry, no need to hide your light,_ said Alice, squeezing his hand. She giggled, __ance, monkey, dance.

The city blew the windows of my brain wide open. But being in a place so bright, fast and brilliant made you vertiginous with possibility: it didn't necessarily help you grasp those possibilities. I still had no idea what I was going to do. I felt directionless and lost in the crowd. I couldn't yet see how the city worked, but I began to find out.

I__ using Mao as my inspiration. __ast away illusions. Prepare for struggle._ I__ back in business, baby. You don__ know you__e stuck until you get moving.