Michael Cunningham Quotes

Quotes about:

• I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.

  Michael Cunningham

  Morning, Thinking, Feelings

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

  46 Copy quote

• The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.

  Michael Cunningham

  Law, Secret, Body

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “A Home at the End of the World: A Novel”, p.24, Macmillan

  37 Copy quote

• There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be.

  Michael Cunningham

  World

  31 Copy quote

• Dear Leonard. To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.

  Michael Cunningham

  Years, Looks, Lasts

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

  33 Copy quote

• we become the stories we tell ourselves

  Michael Cunningham

  Stories

  22 Copy quote

• I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.

  Michael Cunningham

  Beautiful, Different, Way

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “A Home at the End of the World: A Novel”, p.10, Macmillan

  20 Copy quote

• You can't find peace by avoiding life.

  Michael Cunningham

  Peace, Avoiding Death, Avoiding Pain

  11 Copy quote

• I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.

  Michael Cunningham

  Book, Kissing, First Kiss

  15 Copy quote

• Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am.

  Michael Cunningham

  Rain, Night, Wind

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.135, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

  15 Copy quote

• There is just this for consolation: an hour here or there, when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined , though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so.

  Michael Cunningham

  Morning, Children, Odds

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

  9 Copy quote

• She is overtaken by a sensation of unbeing. There is no other word for it.

  Michael Cunningham

  Sensations

  13 Copy quote

• Perhaps, in the extravagance of youth, we give away our devotions easily and all but arbitrarily, on the mistaken assumption that we’ll always have more to give.

  Michael Cunningham

  Giving, Extravagance, Youth

  4 Copy quote

• One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.

  Michael Cunningham

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.69, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

  14 Copy quote

• I am beginning to understand the true difference between youth and age. Young people have time to make plans and think of new ideas. Older people need their whole energy to keep up with what’s already been set in motion.

  Michael Cunningham

  Thinking, Ideas, Differences

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “A Home at the End of the World: A Novel”, p.269, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

  Michael Cunningham

  Literature, Dangerous

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.97, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

  45 Copy quote

• Oh, all you immigrants and visionaries, what do you hope to find here, who do you hope to become?

  Michael Cunningham

  Visionaries, Immigrants

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “By Nightfall: A Novel”, p.70, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  4 Copy quote

• Remember, how often the great art of the past didn't look great at first, how often it didn't look like art at all; how much easier it is, decades or centuries later, to adore it, not only because it is, in fact, great but because it's still here; because the inevitable little errors and infelicities tend to recede in an object that's survived the War of 1812, the eruption of Krakatoa, the rise and fall of Nazism.

  Michael Cunningham

  Art, War, Fall

  11 Copy quote

• What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story?

  Michael Cunningham

  Hero, Stories

  6 Copy quote

• I don't have any regrets, really, except that one. I wanted to write about you, about us, really. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to write about everything, the life we're having and the lives we might have had. I wanted to write about all the ways we might have died.

  Michael Cunningham

  Regret, Writing, Mean

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.67, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

  9 Copy quote

• I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.

  Michael Cunningham

  Healing, Writing, Optimistic

  6 Copy quote

• What I wanted to do seemed simple. I wanted something alive and shocking enough that it could be a morning in somebody's life. The most ordinary morning. Imagine, trying to do that.

  Michael Cunningham

  Morning, Simple, Trying

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.199, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

  7 Copy quote

• A writer should always feel like he's in over his head

  Michael Cunningham

  Writing, Should, Feels

  7 Copy quote

• As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.

  Michael Cunningham

  Speak, Authority, Reader

  7 Copy quote

• Silly humans. Banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity.

  Michael Cunningham

  Stars, Silly, Moving

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “By Nightfall: A Novel”, p.198, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  5 Copy quote

• I know, speaking for myself, no matter what I'm able to do, no matter what book comes out and ends up on paper, I always had something bigger and grander in my head.

  Michael Cunningham

  Book, Paper, Matter

  "The Pulitzer for Fiction". "PBS NewsHour" with Elizabeth Farnsworth, www.pbs.org. April 19, 1999.

  4 Copy quote

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