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These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect everybody's little display of genius.

Michael Cunningham

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Michael Cunningham
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: November 6
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Cincinnati
Ohio
People
Days
Believes
Everybody
Devotion
Littles
Measure
Little
Intellect
Firsts
Kindness
First
Tired
Clarissa
Sometimes
Capacity
Display
Believe
Genius
Wit

More quotes by Michael Cunningham

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Youth is the only sexy tragedy. It's James Dean jumping into his Porsche Spyder, it's Marilyn heading off to bed.
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The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.
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Love is deep, a mystery - who wants to understand its every particular?
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I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.
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I just don't feel much interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
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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?
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We always worry about the wrong things, don't we?
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a certain bohemian, good-witch sort of charm
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Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am.
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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.
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Please, God, send me something to adore.
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I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.
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What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run.
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. . . he felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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People are more than you think they are. And they're less, as well. The trick lies in negotiating your way between the two.
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I seem to produce a novel approximately once every three years.
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Man, he said, I'm not afraid of graveyards. The dead are just, you know, people who wanted the same things you and I want. What do we want? I asked blurrily. Aw, man, you know, he said. We just want, well, the same things these people wanted. What was that? He shrugged. To live, I guess, he said.
Michael Cunningham