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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.

Michael Cunningham

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Michael Cunningham
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: November 6
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Cincinnati
Ohio
Need
Differences
Whole
Age
Motion
Needs
Understand
Older
Make
Energy
Beginning
Time
Keep
Youth
Think
True
Plans
Thinking
Young
Difference
People
Ideas
Already

More quotes by Michael Cunningham

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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.
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I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.
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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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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.
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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.
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Love is deep, a mystery - who wants to understand its every particular?
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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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. . . he felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting.
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It's the world, you live in it, even if some boy has made a fool of you.
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I just don't feel much interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
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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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As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.
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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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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
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Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.
Michael Cunningham
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What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.
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Accept that, like many men, you have a streak of the homoerotic in you. Why would you, why would anyone, want to be that straight?
Michael Cunningham
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Silly humans. Banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity.
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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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I have no useful theories about love and marriage.
Michael Cunningham