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

Michael Cunningham

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Michael Cunningham
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: November 6
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Cincinnati
Ohio
Speak
Must
Sentence
Readers
Sentences
Opening
Writers
Authority
Reader

More quotes by Michael Cunningham

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We always worry about the wrong things, don't we?
Michael Cunningham
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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
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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.
Michael Cunningham
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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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Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself.
Michael Cunningham
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Love is deep, a mystery - who wants to understand its every particular?
Michael Cunningham
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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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One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.
Michael Cunningham
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I just don't feel much interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Michael Cunningham
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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
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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
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Silly humans. Banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity.
Michael Cunningham
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. . . he felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting.
Michael Cunningham
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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.
Michael Cunningham
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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.
Michael Cunningham
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I seem to produce a novel approximately once every three years.
Michael Cunningham
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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
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we become the stories we tell ourselves
Michael Cunningham
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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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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.
Michael Cunningham