Quote

What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run.

Michael Cunningham

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Michael Cunningham
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: November 6
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Cincinnati
Ohio
Privileged
Shock
Alive
Scandalously
Almost
Errand
Morning
Errands
Simple
June
Running
Prosperous
Thrill

More quotes by Michael Cunningham

Image
Youth is the only sexy tragedy. It's James Dean jumping into his Porsche Spyder, it's Marilyn heading off to bed.
Michael Cunningham
Image
What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. And there it is... It was death. I chose life.
Michael Cunningham
Image
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
Image
a certain bohemian, good-witch sort of charm
Michael Cunningham
Image
You could say I don't want for me be seen primarily as a gay writer. I've never hidden my sexuality. It matters that I'm gay, it matters that I'm white, it matters that I'm male, it matters that I'm American. But basically it's just less and less of a big deal.
Michael Cunningham
Image
There's 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.
Michael Cunningham
Image
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
Image
This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw material at hand.
Michael Cunningham
Image
You want to give him the book of his own life, the book that will locate him, parent him, arm him for the changes.
Michael Cunningham
Image
It's the world, you live in it, even if some boy has made a fool of you.
Michael Cunningham
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I seem to produce a novel approximately once every three years.
Michael Cunningham
Image
You can't find peace by avoiding life.
Michael Cunningham
Image
Here is the world, and you live in it, and are grateful. You try to be grateful.
Michael Cunningham
Image
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
Image
Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write.
Michael Cunningham
Image
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
Image
we become the stories we tell ourselves
Michael Cunningham
Image
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