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The Buddha of Suburbia
Hanif Kureishi
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The cruellest thing you can do to Kerouac is reread him at thirty-eight.”
“Please remove your watch,' he said. 'In my domain time isn't a factor.”
“Yes, Eleanor loathed herself and yet required praise, which she then never believed.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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!”
“The interesting people you wanted to be with - their minds were unusual, you saw things freshly with them and all was not deadness and repetition.”
“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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Book Keywords:
power, fake-friends, money, fake-people, narcissism, parents, praise, failure, self-loathing, self-esteem, growing-up, generosity