Quote

I seem to produce a novel approximately once every three years.

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
Approximately
Produce
Seem
Novel
Three
Seems
Every
Years

More quotes by 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
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
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 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
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
Image
This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw material at hand.
Michael Cunningham
Image
Her cake is a failure, but she is loved anyway. She is loved, she thinks, in more or less the way the gifts will be appreciated: because they have been given with good intentions , because they exist, because they are part of a world in which one wants what one gets.
Michael Cunningham
Image
It's the world, you live in it, even if some boy has made a fool of you.
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
Image
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
Image
we become the stories we tell ourselves
Michael Cunningham
Image
a certain bohemian, good-witch sort of charm
Michael Cunningham
Image
One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.
Michael Cunningham
Image
I just don't feel much interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Michael Cunningham
Image
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
Image
Silly humans. Banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity.
Michael Cunningham
Image
Here is the world, and you live in it, and are grateful. You try to be grateful.
Michael Cunningham
Image
Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself.
Michael Cunningham
Image
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?
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