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Michael Cunningham Biography

Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham (born November 6, 1952) is an American novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999. Cunningham is a senior lecturer of creative writing at Yale University.

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Michael Cunningham Quotes

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.

Believe, Children, Good, Thinking, Told, Unthinkable

I was living my own future and my brother's lost one as well. I represented him here just as he represented me there, in some unguessable other place. His move from life to death might resemble my stepping into the kitchen - into its soft nowhere quality and foggy hum. I breathed the dark air. If I had at that moment a sense of calm kindly death while my heart beat and my lungs expanded, he might know a similar sense of life in the middle of his ongoing death.

Breathed, Brother, Heart, Kitchen, Lost, Moving

Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am.

Night, Rain, Streets, Wind

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.

Believe, Children, Good, Think, Thinking

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

Errand, June, Morning, Running, Simple, Thrill

She is overtaken by a sensation of unbeing. There is no other word for it.

Overtaken, Sensation, Sensations, Unbeing, Word

I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself.

Book, Encourage, Heroic, License, Needs, Years

We always worry about the wrong things, don't we?

Things, Worry, Wrong, Wrong Things

I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.

Altogether, Beautiful, Different, Ladylike, Manly, Way

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.

Live, Men, People, Shrugged, Want

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.

Different, Frailty, Ideas, Kind, Love

There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be.

World, Though, Expect, Harsher, Beauty

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.

Gay, Hidden, Say, Seen, Sexuality, White

A stray fact: insects are not drawn to candle flames, they are drawn to the light on the far side of the flame, they go into the flame and sizzle to nothingness because they're so eager to get to the light on the other side.

Fact, Facts, Flames, Insects, Light, Side

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.

Bear, Choice, Choices, Mean, Regret

What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story?

Hero, Longer, Stories, Story

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.

God, Hours, Stills

She will remain sane and she will live as she was meant to live, richly and deeply, among others of her kind, in full possession and command of her gifts.

Kind, Possession, Command, Gifts, Remain

I don't know if I can face this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the hour after that, and the hour after that. " "You don't have to go to the party. You don't have to go to the ceremony. You don't have to do anything at all. " "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. I'm so sick.

Face, Faces, Hours, Party, Sick

The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.

Body, Defying, Law, Laws, Secret

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