Hanif Kureishi Quotes

You know, I don't think I had a concept of what I would be or do.

One of the greatest struggles of becoming an adult is figuring out what you want to do and what makes you happy. The courageous thing is to stick with it and see it through and see if you were correct.

I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.

To find one's calling is perhaps not the easiest thing in the world, but probably the most important.

I don't know if I'm striving for anything that I can put into words.

I think that's one of the things that's missing in a lot of people's lives. That's finding out what works for you and doing that.

You've got to find yourself first. Everything else'll follow.

I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is.

The key is to figure out what you want out of life, not what you want out of your career.

The secret is to find what you love to do.I mean, I tell the students look for the job that you would take if you didn't need a job. I mean, it's that simple. And I was lucky enough to find it very early in life. And then the second thing is to have people around you that make feel good every day, and make you a better person than you otherwise would be.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

It is more important to know who you are than where you are going, for where you are going will change as the world around you changes.

Despite all the doom and gloom that constantly assaults our senses, there is a way for us to ransom our lives and reclaim our futures: it consists in turning away from the world to recognize what in life makes us truly happy. For each of us, what that is will be different. But once we obtain this inner knowledge, we will possess the ability to transform our outer world. "You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself," the pilot and writer Beryl Markham reminds us. We cannot let this continue to occur.

Yes it did really. It was very exciting to find that my energy could be directed into something more useful and positive. I was starting to get panicked. I was thinking 'what am I going to do with my life?' I wasn't sure what was going to happen. Then I became crazily obsessed with acting. I suddenly had a work ethic and then everything changed completely for the better because I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.

That wonderful and terribly frightening journey of self-discovery. That process of growth, of being an independent person, of learning who you are and what you want from life, is the real secret of life, happiness and beauty.

He had loved and he had found himself. Most people love to lose themselves.

I live art, I respect people, and I've found what I want to do in life - I've found what makes me happy.

I think most people struggle over a matter of years to find a satisfying way to live.

All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific.

I knew what I wanted to do when I was 13 and I had to go through four years of high school to get out. That's a blessing, because I never had to lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling going, 'What am I going to do with my life?'

I choose to fill my days with what I'm passionate about, and live with purpose.

I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted.

A lot of people are simply interested in exploring their own spirituality, their own values, who they are, whether they're happy where they are.

As a teenager, rather than setting myself on a course to pursue fame (quite common growing up in L.A., the entertainment capital of the world), happiness, fulfillment, and spiritual enlightenment (also quite common), I skipped right on to trying to be successful. 'Let's just get on with it,' I felt. 'Onward' became my motto.