Intimacy Quotes

“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?”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“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.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“Love cannot be measured by its duration...”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

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

“Dear God, teach me to be careless.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“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.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“What a quality of innocence people have when they don't expect to be harmed.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“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?”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“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!”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“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.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“My son, there may be a time when I explain these things to you, because there may be a time when I understand them.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“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.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“تتساءل لماذا يتحمّل الناس كل ذلك، لأنهم اعتادوا على ذلك. و لم يعد بإمكانهم أن يروا إمكانية أن تكون الأشياء مختلفة. ما يفاجئني ليس الكم الكثير الذي يطلبه الناس، بل القليل الذي يطلبونه.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“أحسست بالرغبة في أن تلقي الشرطة القبض علي و توجه لي تهمة حيازة عقل لا يمكنني التحكم فيه.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“Truth telling, therefore, has to be an ultimate value, until it clashes with another ultimate value, pleasure, at which point, to state the obvious, there is conflict.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“Children, who have yet to learn our ways, are notoriously promiscuous in their affection. They’ll sit on anyone’s knee.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“The world is made from our imagination; our eyes enliven it, as our hands give it shape.Wanting makes it thrive; meaning is what you put in, not what you extract. you can only see what you are inclined to see, and no more. We have to make the new.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“إنّك لا تتوقف عن حبّ شخص فقط لأنّك تكرهه.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“But to be able to bear one's own mind, to wait while the inner storm of intolerable thoughts blows itself out, leaving one to contemplate the debris with some understanding--that is an enviable state of mind.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“But why do people who are good at families have to be smug and assume it is the only way to live, as if everybody else is inadequate? Why can’t they be blamed for being bad at promiscuity?”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“Herir a alguien es un acto de involuntaria intimidad”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“How utterly our past suffuses us. We live in all our days at once.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“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?”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“Desire makes me laugh because it makes fools of us all. Still, rather a fool than a fascist.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“If living is an art it is a strange one, an art of everything, and particularly of spirited pleasure.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“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?”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

“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.”
― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy