Hanif Kureishi - The Buddha of Suburbia (1990)

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All the same, my depression and self-hatred, my desire to mutilate myself with broken bottles, my numbness and crying fits, my inability to get out of bed for days and days, the feeling of the world moving in to crush me, went on and on. But I knew I wouldn't go mad, even if that release, that letting-go, was a freedom I desired. I was waiting for myself to heal.

Hanif Kureishi
My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost.

Hanif Kureishi
Everyone looks at you…and thinks: an Indian boy, how exotic, how interesting, what stories of aunties and elephants we'll hear now from him. And you're from Orpington.

Hanif Kureishi
I can't sleep with you tonight, baby, my head's all messed up, you've no idea. It's somewhere else and it's full of voices and songs and bad things...

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

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

Hanif Kureishi
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.

Hanif Kureishi
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.

Hanif Kureishi