I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss. Michael Cunningham More Quotes by Michael Cunningham More Quotes From Michael Cunningham 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 feelings morning thinking She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself. Michael Cunningham dangerous literature The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws. Michael Cunningham body secret law There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be. Michael Cunningham world 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 lasts looks years I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful. Michael Cunningham different beautiful way Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am. Michael Cunningham rain wind night Remember, how often the great art of the past didn't look great at first, how often it didn't look like art at all; how much easier it is, decades or centuries later, to adore it, not only because it is, in fact, great but because it's still here; because the inevitable little errors and infelicities tend to recede in an object that's survived the War of 1812, the eruption of Krakatoa, the rise and fall of Nazism. Michael Cunningham war art fall we become the stories we tell ourselves Michael Cunningham stories A writer should always feel like he's in over his head Michael Cunningham should writing feels What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story? Michael Cunningham hero stories One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper. Michael Cunningham reading writing book Silly humans. Banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity. Michael Cunningham stars silly moving Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. Michael Cunningham citizenship venture country She is overtaken by a sensation of unbeing. There is no other word for it. Michael Cunningham sensations 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 youth extravagance giving I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act. Michael Cunningham optimistic healing writing Philip Glass, like [Virginia] Woolf, is more interested in that which continues than he is in that which begins, climaxes, and ends... Glass and Woolf have both broken out of the traditional realm of the story, whether literary or musical, in favor of something more meditative, less neatly delineated, and more true to life. For me, Glass [finds] in three repeated notes something of [a] rapture of sameness. Michael Cunningham virginia glasses broken As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers. Michael Cunningham reader speak authority The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things. Michael Cunningham artist writing book
