Michael Cunningham Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• I feel like there's something terrible and wonderful and amazing that's just beyond my grasp. I have dreams about it. I do dream, by the way. It hovers over me at odd moments. And then it's gone. I feel like I'm always on the brink of something that never arrives. I want to either have it or be free of it.

  Michael Cunningham

  Dream, Gone, Want

  5 Copy quote

• Yes," she answers and does not move. She might, at this moment, be nothing but a floating intelligence; not even a brain inside a skull, just a presence that perceives, as a ghoast might. Yes, she thinks, this is probably how it must feel to be a ghost. It's a little like reading, isn't it-that same sensation of knowing people, settings, situations, without playing any particular part beyond that of the willing observer.

  Michael Cunningham

  Moving, Reading, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• She is, above all else, tired; she wants more than anything to return to her bed and her book. The world, this world, feels suddenly stunned and stunted, far from everything.

  Michael Cunningham

  Book, Tired, Bed

  4 Copy quote

• He's one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won't, possibly can't, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.

  Michael Cunningham

  Art, Jobs, Thinking

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “By Nightfall: A Novel”, p.12, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  6 Copy quote

• We always worry about the wrong things, don't we?

  Michael Cunningham

  Worry, Wrong Things

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “By Nightfall: A Novel”, p.17, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  4 Copy quote

• Any other vexations to report?" he asks. "I love the word 'vexations.'" "It's the 'x.' Nice to jump off a 'v' and bite into an 'x' like that." "Just the usual ones," she says. "How was the weekend?" "Vexing. Not really, I just wanted to say it. You?

  Michael Cunningham

  Nice, Weekend, Usual

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “By Nightfall: A Novel”, p.72, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

  Michael Cunningham

  Thinking, Two, People

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.200, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

  4 Copy quote

• We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep--it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself.

  Michael Cunningham

  Party, Struggle, Book

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.225, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

  5 Copy quote

• A stray fact: insects are not drawn to candle flames, they are drawn to the light on the far side of the flame, they go into the flame and sizzle to nothingness because they're so eager to get to the light on the other side.

  Michael Cunningham

  Light, Flames, Facts

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “By Nightfall: A Novel”, p.207, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  4 Copy quote

• Maybe it’s not, in the end, the virtues of others that so wrenches our hearts as it is the sense of almost unbearably poignant recognition when we see them at their most base, in their sorrow and gluttony and foolishness. You need the virtues, too—some sort of virtues—but we don’t care about Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina or Raskolnikov because they’re good. We care about them because they’re not admirable, because they’re us, and because great writers have forgiven them for it.

  Michael Cunningham

  Heart, Sorrow, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• That summer when she was eighteen, it seemed anything could happen, anything at all.

  Michael Cunningham

  Summer, Happens, Eighteen

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.95, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

  4 Copy quote

• You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard.

  Michael Cunningham

  Peace, Avoiding Death, Avoiding Pain

  "The Hours". www.imdb.com. 2002.

  11 Copy quote

• But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another.

  Michael Cunningham

  Hours, Stills

  "The Hours by Michael Cunningham" by John Mullan, www.theguardian.com. July 1, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

• We’d hoped for love of a different kind, love that knew and forgave our human frailty but did not miniaturize our grander ideas of ourselves.

  Michael Cunningham

  Ideas, Different, Kind

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “A Home at the End of the World: A Novel”, p.172, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• She thinks how much more space a being occupies in life than it does in death; how much illusion of size is contained in gestures and movements, in breathing. Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.

  Michael Cunningham

  Thinking, Breathing, Space

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.165, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

  4 Copy quote

• If you've really loved a book, or a movie for that matter, really loved it, what you want is that same book again, but as if you've never read it. And when you get something unfamiliar, you feel betrayed.

  Michael Cunningham

  Book, Betrayed, Want

  8 Copy quote

• A certain slightly cruel disregard for the feelings of living people is simply part of the package. I think a writer, if hes any good, is not an entirely benign entity in the world.

  Michael Cunningham

  Thinking, People, Feelings

  "Michael Cunningham: A life in writing" by Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. February 7, 2011.

  9 Copy quote

• I just don't feel much interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

  Michael Cunningham

  Rich, Lifestyle, Feels

  4 Copy quote

• I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself.

  Michael Cunningham

  Book, Years, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest.

  Michael Cunningham

  Hero, Thinking, Virginia

  "Michael Cunningham: A life in writing" by Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. February 7, 2011.

  5 Copy quote

• On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and, yes, read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down, but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.

  Michael Cunningham

  Summer, Night, Lovely

  4 Copy quote

• You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally.

  Michael Cunningham

  Enemy, Dresses, Young

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.23, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

  5 Copy quote

• It's the world, you live in it, even if some boy has made a fool of you.

  Michael Cunningham

  Boys, World, Fool

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “By Nightfall: A Novel”, p.222, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  4 Copy quote

• I think of the people who commit these acts as children. They're in their 20s, but like certain children, they have been told only one story, over and over. Like most children, they believe in an easily identifiable good and evil, and like most children, they are capable of unthinkable cruelty.

  Michael Cunningham

  Children, Believe, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation resembles no book I've read before. If I tell you that it's funny, and moving, and true; that it's as compact and mysterious as a neutron; that it tells a profound story of love and parenthood while invoking (among others) Keats, Kafka, Einstein, Russian cosmonauts, and advice for the housewife of 1896, will you please simply believe me, and read it?

  Michael Cunningham

  Believe, Moving, Book

  5 Copy quote

Page 4 of 5

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin