Good Intentions Quotes

“I just think it would be easier sometimes if we didn’t have all this trailing behind us – family, culture, tradition. Being the most dutiful child you can be. As if all that matters is conforming to what your parents want of you, and all they care about is what other people think of them, of you. We try so hard to be this upstanding family, just in case someone looks closely and sees the cracks.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“Sometimes there is an emptiness inside him so large it would take the entire world to fill. It comes and goes as it pleases, triggered by nothing specific.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“But, Nur, it’s not enough to read the right books, to say the right things, to tweet your anger about police brutality or supporting Black people, if you’re going to come home and make your Black girlfriend”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“It can overwhelm Nur sometimes, the sprawl of his family, and though he loves all of them, he’s also terrified by how many people he has to please. How many people he is letting down.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“My mum always wanted to be a doctor, my dad always wanted to be a lawyer. They don’t understand this lack of drive. And with the depression, they’re scared to even talk about it in case she does anything.’ ‘She wouldn’t …”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“Then, about half an hour into it, the novelty will wear off and he’ll wonder why he’s there, surrounded by people he doesn’t know, feeling a strange emptiness that defies definition.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll overthrow the patriarchy by throwing tampons at every guy that walks past the house.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“Because at the end of the day, your fresh-snow-white skin means that you get to walk around without having some white woman cross the street to get away from you, clutching her bag a little tighter because she thinks you’re going to rob her,”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“If he’s being honest, there is something about watching together, about sitting here, year after year at home, that even he likes.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“Yasmina is... She makes me feel whole, Mum. I feel like I can do anything when I'm with her and that the world makes sense. She's brilliant, generous, kind, caring. She's a good person. Her family are good people.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“Don't deny them the chance to grow and then hate them for their ignorance.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“But the way you talk about it, Nur, you make it sound like it’s the worst thing in the world. To be set up by your parents, to live near your parents, to live that life. But it’s not. It’s actually a nice life and I can see it for myself now, I can see myself living like that. It’s not something I want to be ashamed of or feel judged for.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“And your son is a good boy. If there’s someone better out there for Yasmina, we haven’t met him.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“Nur has recently become acutely aware of the way some South Asians talk about race and skin tone, seen it on the lips of people in his family. The way his cousins, who have darker skin than the others, hide under long sleeves and jackets, even when it is warm outside, staying away from the sun in the hope of growing lighter.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“The way our people talk about marriage, how important it is. The way we talk about people’s wives and husbands and children. I get why you waited to tell them. But why did you feel you couldn’t be honest with us? Why you couldn’t tell me?”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“Nani has always acted like the godfather of their family, sitting at the head of the table since Nana died, leaving her to lead the family alone.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“To leave my family like that, go to a place where I don’t know anything, try to make a life for myself there. The sacrifices that people made so I could live here, so I could be … this.’ He gestures at himself.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“How many people in your family are married to Black people?’ Rahat doesn’t answer, and Nur recognizes the lines in his face and fears that he has said the wrong thing, feels guilty that he has made Rahat feel this way. ‘Sorry,’ Nur says. ‘I didn’t mean to snap.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“Like he needs space. She’s the pregnant one. Then he leaves. Doesn’t come back until she phones him to remind him she’s carrying his kid.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“That’s all my grandmother does. Complains about her bougie liberal kid who married someone else’s bougie liberal kid, who raised their kid as a bougie liberal too, all going about their lives blissfully ignorant of whether they’re behaving the way they’re meant to, if they’re living their lives the way other people want them to. Who act the way they want to, not the way they’re expected to by …’ He gestures vaguely. ‘By all that stuff.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“For your exposé on gentrification in Birmingham’s inner-city boroughs?’ Iman laughs. ‘Wow, you really have a thing against Birmingham, don’t you?”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“I don’t mean … I just think they can get, like, aggressive. Maybe they’ll come back and break into this house and try to beat you up. Or, like, follow you home from university. Or something. I don’t know.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions

“He wishes he could stay here, not in the house itself but closer than where he is now. That he didn’t have to travel for two hours to get home to see them, that he could be around his family more often.”
― Kasim Ali, Good Intentions