"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."
- Hanif Kureishi
"Plato, along with the latest pope, recognised how dangerous it is to have an artist around making mischief, stirring things up with the spoon of truth and intoxicant of fantasy and magic. And so, for ..."
"The writer, indeed every real artist, was the devil, rivalling God in creativity, trying even to surpass him. God was surely man’s most fatal creation, the devil’s kitsch bitch. It was God, with his i..."
"Old age is the new childhood."
"Being in love means being at the mercy of someone's childhood."
"If there’s no sacrifice, there’s no love."
"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 ..."
"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..."
"Popeye the Sailor Man has more cultural longevity. Only women and poofs read or write now. Otherwise, these days, no sooner has someone been sodomised by a close relative than they think they can writ..."
"Act – make an event. Smash the coordinates and see where the smithereens fly. Let in the madness, and be sure to be a danger to oneself and others. Too much thinking turns you into that fool Hamlet."