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f6fc1fd
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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?
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Hanif Kureishi |
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52c5f58
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Soon we will be strangers. No, we can never be that. Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be dangerous acquaintances with a history.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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9f1d6a9
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Falling in love was simple; one had only to yield. Digesting another person, however, and sustaining love, was bloody work, and not a soft job.
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perseverance
love
commitment
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Hanif Kureishi |
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1918422
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You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them.
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hate
relationships
love
intimacy
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Hanif Kureishi |
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d022a35
|
How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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db1addb
|
The cruellest thing you can do to Kerouac is reread him at thirty-eight.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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e9d41e8
|
Love cannot be measured by its duration...
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Hanif Kureishi |
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6b8a09f
|
Without love, most of life remains concealed. Nothing is as fascinating as love, unfortunately.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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1532da3
|
I don't want to be loved. I want to be desired. Love is safety, but desire is foul.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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a01db11
|
Dear God, teach me to be careless.
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hanif-kureishi
intimacy
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Hanif Kureishi |
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a159f97
|
Please remove your watch,' he said. 'In my domain time isn't a factor.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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0195180
|
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.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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f1dd618
|
At the deepest level people are madder than they want to believe. You will find that they fear being eaten, and are alarmed by their desire to devour others.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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3f925da
|
Our lives can only be lived forward and understood backwards. Living a life and understanding it occupy different dimensions.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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76c08b0
|
Yes, Eleanor loathed herself and yet required praise, which she then never believed.
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praise
self-loathing
self-esteem
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Hanif Kureishi |
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4c76773
|
What a quality of innocence people have when they don't expect to be harmed.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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a326fee
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No amount of promises can guarantee love
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Hanif Kureishi |
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4d52da6
|
I love 'yes.' It's practically the most interesting word of all, don't you think?" Like a hinge opening a door outward. Yes, yes, yes." --
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Hanif Kureishi |
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8bc5d21
|
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?
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|
love
hanif-kureishi
intimacy
|
Hanif Kureishi |
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2e1cfdc
|
Nothing can be repaired or advanced but only accepted
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Hanif Kureishi |
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b5294c5
|
The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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d74f88a
|
And silence, like darkness, can be kind; it, too, is a language
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Hanif Kureishi |
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64624cf
|
So badly did he not want to fuck it up, he could only fuck it up.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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ccd2571
|
One would hope, as well that intimacy would leave more of a mark, that more of it would remain. But it doesn't. You just end up thinking, who is this person?
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Hanif Kureishi |
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71347c4
|
My pleasures disappeared with my vices.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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a211029
|
But in love each moment is magnified, and every gesture, word and syllable is examined like a speech by the President.
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love
|
Hanif Kureishi |
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1a7e699
|
These days everyone was insisting on their identity, coming out as a man, woman, gay, black, Jew - brandishing whichever features they could claim, as if without a tag they wouldn't be human.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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2d6813a
|
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!
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relationships
intimacy
|
Hanif Kureishi |
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9154a04
|
Almost certainly I will not tell her my intentions this evening or tonight. I will put it off. Why? Because words are actions and they make things happen. Once they are out you cannot put them back.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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14fc868
|
Fundamentalism is dictatorship of the mind
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Hanif Kureishi |
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408d154
|
For Mum, life was fundamentally hell. You went blind, you got raped, people forgot your birthday, Nixon got elected, your husband fled with a blonde from Beckenham, and then you got old, you couldn't walk and you died.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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8645f3b
|
Like you, she will have been with other people, but I've got a feeling there's something between you.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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dea4e3c
|
And so I sat in the centre of this old city that I loved, which itself sat at the bottom of a tiny island. I was surrounded by people I loved, and I felt happy and miserable at the same time. I thought of what a mess everything had been, but that it wouldn't always be this way.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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e35e2d2
|
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.
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parents
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Hanif Kureishi |
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5dafa51
|
Desire, like the dead or an unpleasant meal, would keep returning--it was ultimately indigestible.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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391c224
|
People who were only ever half right about things drove me mad. I hated the flood of opinion, the certainty, the easy talk about Cuba and Russia and the economy, because beneath the hard structure of words was an abyss of ignorance and not-knowing; and, in a sense, of not wanting to know.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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0a189ff
|
qd `lmtny lHy@ 'nh Hyn yrk lakhrwn mtHmsan, tftr Hmsthm hm, wl`ks SHyH . ldh klm zddt rGbty b'mr m, tSnW`t brwdan '`Zm Hylh .
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Hanif Kureishi |
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55750ad
|
Someone to whom jokes are never told soon contracts enthusiasm deficiency.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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a516311
|
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 desire under control it lets us down or fills us with hope. Desire makes me laugh because it makes fools of us all.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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6beb25a
|
If jealousy was the vindaloo of love, I'd imagined her tongue burning, and such a fire forcing her to spill her truth.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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0d88dcd
|
One falls in love, and then learns, for the duration, that one is at the mercy of someone else's childhood.
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Hanif Kureishi |
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6328705
|
My son, there may be a time when I explain these things to you, because there may be a time when I understand them.
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|
hanif-kureishi
intimacy
|
Hanif Kureishi |
|
a103084
|
Suddenly I shouted into the night air. 'Yes, yes, yes, it is true!" And now the world had some tension in it; now it twanged and vibrated with meaning and possibility! 'Yes, yes, fucking yes!"
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Hanif Kureishi |
|
7105a21
|
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.
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money
fake-people
fake-friends
generosity
power
|
Hanif Kureishi |