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Hanif Kureishi

Hanif Kureishi Books

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The Last Word

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The Nothing

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Intimacy

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“How unsettling is desire! That devil never sleeps or keeps still. Desire is naughty and doesn’t conform to our ideals, which is why we have such a need of them. Desire mocks all human endeavour and makes it worthwhile. Desire is the original anarchist and undercover agent - no wonder people want it arrested and kept in a safe place. And just when we think we’ve got it under control it lets us down, or fills us with hope. Desire makes me laugh because it makes fools of us all. Still, rather a fool than a fascist.”

LoveDesireHumanityHumilityIllusionFoolishness
Book:Intimacy
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“Maybe you never stop feeling like an eight-year-old in front of your parents. You resolve to be your mature self, to react in this considered way rather than that elemental way, to breathe evenly from the bottom of your stomach and to see your parents as equals, but within five minutes your intentions are blown to hell, and you're babbling and screaming in rage like an angry child.”

Growing UpParents
Book:The Buddha of Suburbia
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“What a strange business this acting is, Pyke said; you are trying to convince people that you're someone else, that this is not-me. The way to do it is this, he said: when in character, playing not-me, you have to be yourself. To make your not-self real you have to steal from your authentic self. A false stroke, a wrong note, anything pretended, and to the audience you are as obvious as a Catholic naked in a mosque. The closer you play to yourself the better. Paradox of paradoxes: to be someone else successfully you must be yourself! This I learned!”

CharacterActingTheaterTheatreCinema
Book:The Buddha of Suburbia
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“What idiots we were! How misinformed! Why didn't we understand that we were happily condemning ourselves to being nothing better than motor-mechanics? Why couldn't we see that? For Eleanor's crowd hard words and sophisticated ideas were in the air they breathed from birth, and this language was the currency that bought you the best of what the world could offer. But for us it could only ever be a second language, consciously acquired.”

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Book:The Buddha of Suburbia
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“He died at the wrong time, when there was much to be clarified and established. They hadn’t even started to be grown-ups together. There was this piece of heaven, this little girl he’d carried around the shop on his shoulders; and then one day she was gone, replaced by a foreigner, an uncooperative woman he didn’t know how to speak to. Being so confused, so weak, so in love, he chose strength and drove her away from himself. The last years he spent wondering where she’d gone, and slowly came to realise that she would never return, and that the husband he’d chosen for her was an idiot.”

FatherRegretParentsFather Daughter
Book:The Buddha of Suburbia
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