Frases de Hanif Kureishi

“Sé que el amor es un trabajo sucio; tienes que mancharte las manos. Si te mantienes a distancia, no sucede nada interesante. Además, debes encontrar la distancia adecuada entre las personas. Si están demasiado cerca, te aplastan; si están demasiado lejos, te abandonan. ¿Cómo mantenerlos en la situación adecuada?”

“Cuando hablo conmigo mismo, es con ella con quien hablo”

“Papá me enseñó a coquetear con todo el mundo, chicas y chicos, y acabé por considerar el encanto -y no la cortesía o la franquza, o incluso la decencia- la principal virtud mundana”

“Asentí con la cabeza. Al fin y al cabo asentir no puede considerarse exactamente una mentira, ¿no?”

“Creo que la felicidad sólo es posible si nos dejamos guiar por nuestros sentimientos, nuestra intuición y nuestros deseos verdaderos. Si se actúa empujado por el sentido del deber, la obligación, el sentimiento de culpabilidad o el deseo de contentar a los demás, sólo se consigue la desdicha. Hay que aceptar la felicidad cuando es posible, no de un modo egoísta, sino teniendo siempre presente que formamos parte del mundo, de los demás, que no somos algo independiente. ¿Hay que perseguir la propia felicidad, cueste lo que cueste, a expensas de los demás? ¿O hay que ser desdichado para que los demás puedan ser felices? No hay nadie que no haya tenido que enfrentarse a este dilema.”

“Nos aferramos al pasado -dijo-, a lo antiguo, porque tenemos miedo. […] Nuestras vidas se estancan, se vuelven rancias. Nos da miedo todo lo nuevo, todo cuanto podría ayudarnos a crecer, a cambiar.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.”

“The cruellest thing you can do to Kerouac is reread him at thirty-eight.”

“Love cannot be measured by its duration…”

“Without love, most of life remains concealed. Nothing is as fascinating as love, unfortunately.”

“I don't want to be loved. I want to be desired. Love is safety, but desire is foul.”

“Dear God, teach me to be careless.”

“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.”

“Please remove your watch,' he said. 'In my domain time isn't a factor.”

“Why do people who are good at families have to be smug and assume it is the only way to live. … Why can’t they be blamed for being bad at promiscuity?”

“Our lives can only be lived forward and understood backwards. Living a life and understanding it occupy different dimensions.”

“No amount of promises can guarantee love”

“Yes, Eleanor loathed herself and yet required praise, which she then never believed.”

“What a quality of innocence people have when they don't expect to be harmed.”

“… 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.”

“Nothing can be repaired or advanced but only accepted”

“Security and safety were the reward of dullness.”

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

“you can’t just let people down, dammit.”

“They gave us the language but it is only we who know how to use it”