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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. By Michael Cunningham Youth Arbitrarily Give Extravagance Devotions

Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation resembles no book I've read before. If I tell you that it's funny, and moving, and true; that it's as compact and mysterious as a neutron; that it tells a profound story of love and parenthood while invoking (among others) Keats, Kafka, Einstein, Russian cosmonauts, and advice for the housewife of 1896, will you please simply believe me, and read it? By Michael Cunningham Offill Dept Speculation Jenny Read

There is something exciting about this. Peter still doesn't want to have sex with Mizzy, but there is something thrilling about downing a shot of vodka with another man who happens to be naked. There's the covert brotherliness of it, a locker-room aspect, the low, masculine, eroticized love-hum that's not so much about the flesh as it is about the commonality. You, Peter, as devoted as you are to your wife, as completely as you understand her very real worries on Mizzy's behalf, also understand Mizzy's desire to make his own way, to avoid that maelstrom of womanly ardor, that distinctly feminine sense that you will be healed, whether you want to be or not.Men are united in their commonness, maybe it's as simple as that. By Michael Cunningham Mizzy Peter Exciting Understand Naked

I'm not this unusual," she said. "It's just my hair."She looked at Bobby and she looked at me, with an expression at once disdainful and imploring. She was forty, pregnant, and in love with two men at once. I think what she could not abide was the zaniness of her life. Like many of us, she had grown up expecting romance to bestow dignity and direction."Be brave," I told her. Bobby and I stood before her, confused and homeless and lacking a plan, beset by an aching but chaotic love that refused to focus in the conventional way. Traffic roared behind us. A truck honked its hydraulic horn, a monstrous, oceanic sound. Clare shook her head, not in denial but in exasperation. Because she could think of nothing else to do, she began walking again, more slowly, toward the row of trees. By Michael Cunningham Looked Unusual Bobby Love Hair

Eventually, decades later, when the king was dying, the queen gently ushered everybody out into the corridor, closed the door to the royal bedchamber, and got into bed with her husband. She started singing to him. They laughed. He was short of breath, but he could still laugh. They asked each other, Is this silly? Is this ... pretentious? But they both knew that everything there was to say had been said already, over and over, across the years. And so the king, relieved, released, free to be silly, asked her to sing him a song from his childhood. He didn't need to be regal anymore, he didn't need to seem commanding or dignified, not with her. They were, in their way, dying together, and they both knew it. It wasn't happening only to him. So she started singing. They shared one last laugh - they agreed that the cat had a better voice than she did. Still, she sang him out of the world. By Michael Cunningham Eventually Decades Corridor Closed Bedchamber

a certain bohemian, good-witch sort of charm By Michael Cunningham Bohemian Goodwitch Charm Sort

Barret thinks- he thinks, briefly- of turning around and leaving the park; of being, this time, the vanisher, the man who leaves you wondering, who offers no explanation, not even the sour satisfaction of a real fight; who simply drifts away, because (it seems) there's affection and there's sex but there's no urgency, no little hooks clasping little eyes; no binding, no dogged devotions, no prayers for mercy, not when mercy can be so easily self-administered. What would it be like, Barrett wonders, to be the other, the man who's had the modest portion he thinks of as enough, who slips away before the mess sets in, before he's available to accusation and recrimination, before the authorities start demanding of him When, and Why, and With Whom By Michael Cunningham Mercy Man Briefly Barret Park

Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest. By Michael Cunningham Woolf Virginia Confidence Hero Lack

Barrett lingers awhile. He's not eager to relinquish the strange pleasure of sitting in the green chair, surrounded by the ever-diminishing offerings that had, just yesterday, been daily articles, watching the apartment disappear, piece by piece. By Michael Cunningham Barrett Awhile Lingers Piece Chair

Barrett is a bigger guy, not fat (not yet) but ursine, crimson of eye and lip; ginger-furred, possessed (he likes to think) of an enchanted sensual slyness, the prince transformed into wolf or lion, all slumbering large-pawed docility, awaiting, with avid yellow eyes, love's first kiss. By Michael Cunningham Gingerfurred Possessed Awaiting Barrett Guy

There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life. -Laura Brown- By Michael Cunningham Times Belong Kill Plan Made

We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep - it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. 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, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. By Michael Cunningham Sleep Lives Simple Ordinary Live

On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and, yes, read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down, but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there. By Michael Cunningham Read Summer Night Lovely Sit

Clarissa will be bereaved, deeply lonely, but she will not die. She will be too much in love with life, with London. Virginia imagines someone else, yes, someone strong of body but frail-minded; someone with a touch of genius, of poetry, ground under by the wheels of the world, by war and government, by doctors; a someone who is, technically speaking insane, because that person sees meaning everywhere, knows that trees are sentient beings and sparrows sing in Greek. Yes, someone like that. Clarissa, sane Clarissa -exultant, ordinary Clarissa - will go on, loving London, loving her life of ordinary pleasures, and someone else, a deranged poet, a visonary, will be the one to die. By Michael Cunningham Clarissa London Bereaved Deeply Lonely

Susan was a tough-minded romantic. She wanted to fall in love with a book. She always had reasons for her devotions, as an astute reader would, but she was, to her credit, probably the most emotional one among us. Susan could fall in love with a book in more or less the way one falls in love with a person. Yes, you can provide, if asked, a list of your loved one's lovable qualities: he's kind and funny and smart and generous and he knows the names of trees.But he's also more than amalgamation of qualities. You love him, the entirety of him, which can't be wholly explained by even the most exhaustive explication of his virtues. And you love him no less for his failings. O.K., he's bad with money, he can be moody sometimes, and he snores. His marvels so outshine the little complaints as to render them ridiculous. By Michael Cunningham Love Romantic Susan Toughminded Fall

We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. 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, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so ... By Michael Cunningham Canada Live Lives Parties World

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. By Michael Cunningham Living Future Brother Lost Death

What's the most fundamental human urge?"Barrett recites for her. "To find the perfect pair of jeans. To find the jeans that fit and flatter you so ideally that everybody, every cognizant being on the planet, will want to fuck you. By Michael Cunningham Barrett Urge Find Fundamental Human

You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire - that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it's just this book. By Michael Cunningham Fire Shame Book Started Bubble

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. By Michael Cunningham Clarissa Days Devotion Measure People

Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk. The anticipation of dinner and a book. By Michael Cunningham Clarissa Shocked Happiness Walk Thirty

Clarissa, sane Clarissa-exultant, ordinary Clarissa- will go on, loving London, loving her life of ordinary pleasure, and someone else, a deranged poet, a visionary, will be the one to die. By Michael Cunningham Clarissa Clarissaexultant London Loving Sane

We'd hoped vaguely to fall in love but hadn't worried much about it, because we'd thought we had all the time in the world. Love had seemed so final and so dull love was what ruined our parents. Love had delivered them to a life of mortgage payments and household repairs; to unglamorous jobs and the flourescent aisles of a supermarket at two in the afternoon. 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. It sounded possible. If we didn't rush or grab, if we didn't panic, a love both challenging and nurturing might appear. If the person was imaginable, then the person could exist. By Michael Cunningham Love World Hoped Vaguely Fall

Who wouldn't want to fuck these people up? Which of us does not understand, in our own less presentable depths, the demons and wizards compelled to persecute human mutations clearly meant, by deities thinking only of their own entertainment, to make almost everyone feel even lonelier and homelier, more awkward, more doubtful and blamed, than we actually are? By Michael Cunningham Fuck People Understand Depths Meant

The Harrises, on the other hand, have always been constant talkers, not so much for the sake of entertainment or information but because if a silence caught and held for too long they might have fallen into a bottomless sullen discord, a frozen mutual quietude that could never be broken because there never had been and never would be a shared topic of sufficient reviving urgency (not at least one either of his parents could bear to broach), and so they needed to hydroplane forward together on an ever-replenished slick of remark and opinion, of ritualized disinclination (You know, I've never trusted that man) and long-familiar enthusiasms (I know Chinese food is filthy, but I just don't care). By Michael Cunningham Harrises Chinese Hand Talkers Discord

She knew she was going to have trouble believing in herself, in the room of her house, and when she glanced over at this new book on her nightstand, stacked atop the one she finished last night, she reached for it automatically, as if reading were the singular and obvious first task of the day, the only viable way to negotiate the transit from sleep to obligation. By Michael Cunningham House Nightstand Stacked Night Automatically

I sometimes wonder how you live with such a modest sense of romance," Barrett says. "Superstition and romance are not the same thing. By Michael Cunningham Barrett Superstition Romance Live Modest

There is no one there to see it. The world is doing what it always does, demonstrating itself to itself. The world has no interest in the little figures that come and go, the phantoms that worry and worship, that rake the graveled paths and erect the occasional rock garden, the bronze boy-man, the hammered cup for snow to fall into. By Michael Cunningham World Demonstrating Worship Garden Boyman

Which is probably one of the reasons those of us who love contemporary fiction love it as we do. We're alone with it. It arrives without references, without credentials we can trust. Givers of prizes (not to mention critics) do the best they can, but they may - they probably will - be scoffed at by their children's children. We, the living readers, whether or not we're members of juries, decide, all on our own, if we suspect ourselves to be in the presence of greatness. We're compelled to let future generations make the more final decisions, which will, in all likelihood, seem to them so clear as to produce a sense of bafflement over what was valued by their ancestors; what was garlanded and paraded, what carried to the temple on the shoulders of the wise. By Michael Cunningham Love Reasons Contemporary Fiction Children

A sensation rose in him, a high tingling of his blood. There came a wave, a wind that recognized him, that did not love him or hate him. He felt what he knew as the rising of his self, the shifting innerness that yearned and feared, that was more familiar to him than anything could ever be. He knew that an answering substance gathered around him, emanating from the trees and the stars.He stood staring at the constellations. Walt had sent him here, to find this, and he understood. He thought he understood. This was his heaven. It was not Broadway or the horse on wheels. It was grass and silence; it was a field of stars. It was what the book told him, night after night. When he died he would leave his defective body and turn into grass. He would be here like this, forever. There was no reason to fear it, because it was part of him. What he'd thought of as his emptiness, his absence of soul, was only a yearning for this. By Michael Cunningham Blood Sensation Rose High Tingling

The kiss was innocentinnocent enoughbut it was also full of something not unlike what Virginia wants from London, from life; it was full of a love complex and ravenous, ancient, neither this nor that. It will serve as this afternoon's manifestation of the central mystery itself, the elusive brightness that shines from the edges of certain dreams; the brightness which, when we awaken, is already fading from our minds, and which we rise in the hope of finding, perhaps today, this new day in which anything might happen, anything at all. By Michael Cunningham Full London Virginia Ancient Life

Oh, pride, pride. I was so wrong. It defeated me. It simply proved insurmountable. There was so much, oh, far too much for me. I mean, there's the weather, there's the water and the land, there are the animals, and the buildings, and the past and the future, there's space, there's history. There's this thread or something caught between my teeth, there's the old woman across the way, did you notice she switched the donkey and the squirrel on her windowsill? And, of course, there's time. And place. And there's you, Mrs. D. I wanted to tell part of the story of part of you. Oh, I'd love to have done that.""Richard. You wrote a whole book.""But everything's left out of it, almost everything. And then I just stuck on a shock ending. Oh, now, I'm not looking for sympathy, really. We want so much, don't we?""Yes. I suppose we do.""You kissed me beside a pond.""Ten thousand years ago.""It's still happening. By Michael Cunningham Pride Part Wrong Richard Mrs

Constantine, eight years old, was working in his father's garden and thinking about his own garden, a square of powdered granite he had staked out and combed into rows at the top of his family's land. By Michael Cunningham Constantine Garden Land Years Working

How are you feeling, man?" he asks me."Great," I tell him, and it is purely the truth. Doves clatter up out of a bare tree and turn at the same instant, transforming themselves from steel to silver in the snow-blown light. I know at that moment that the drug is working. Everything before me has become suddenly, radiantly itself. How could Carlton have known this was about to happen? "Oh," I whisper. His hand settles on my shoulder."Stay loose, Frisco," he says. "There's not a thing in this pretty world to be afraid of. I'm here."I am not afraid. I am astonished. I had not realized until this moment how real everything is. A twig lies on the marble at my feet, bearing a cluster of hard brown berries. The broken-off end is raw, white, fleshly. Trees are alive."I'm here," Carlton says again, and he is. By Michael Cunningham Great Man Feeling Truth Purely

Here, then, is the last moment of true perception, a man fishing in a red jacket and a cloudy sky reflected on opaque water. By Michael Cunningham Perception Water Moment True Man

My little girl, oh, the daughter I never had. Now tell me, angel, are you fucking anybody new? By Michael Cunningham Angel Girl Daughter Fucking

But you find - surprise - that you like this capitulation from her, this helpless acceding, from the most recent embodiment of all the girls over all the years who've given you nothing, not even a curious glance. Welcome to the darker side of love. By Michael Cunningham Surprise Find Acceding Glance Capitulation

And yet, it gives Peter nothing. Not now. Not today. Not when he needs ... more. More than this well-executed idea. More than the shark in the tank meant to frighten, more than the guy on the street meant to say something pithy about celebrity. More than this. By Michael Cunningham Peter Meant Today Idea Frighten

He wanted to tell her that he was inspired and vigilant and recklessly alone, that his body contained his unsteady heart and something else, something he felt but could not describe: porous and spiky, shifting with flecks of thought, with urge and memory; salted with brightness, flickerings of white and green and pale gold; something that loved stars because it was made of the same substance. By Michael Cunningham Describe Porous Spiky Shifting Thought

I knew how I sounded - slow and oafish, like the cousin who gets ditched and goes on playing alone, as if he'd planned it that way. I couldn't quite tell her about the daily beauty, how I didn't tire of seeing 6 a.m. light on the telephone wires. When I was younger, I'd expected to grow out of the gap between the self I knew and what I heard myself say. I'd expected to feel more like one single person. By Michael Cunningham Sounded Slow Oafish Knew Cousin

You know what I am?" he says."What?""I'm an ordinary person.""Come on.""I know. Who isn't an ordinary person? How horribly presumptuous to want to be anything else. But I have to tell you. I've been treated as something special for so long and I've tried my hardest to be something special but I'm not, I'm not exceptional, I'm smart enough, but I'm not brilliant and I'm not spiritual or even all that focused. I think I can stand that, but I'm not sure if the people around me can. By Michael Cunningham Ordinary Says Person Special Person

Here is the world, and you live in it, and are grateful. You try to be grateful. By Michael Cunningham Grateful World Live

She is, above all else, tired; she wants more than anything to return to her bed and her book. The world, this world, feels suddenly stunned and stunted, far from everything. By Michael Cunningham Tired Book World Return Bed

Without rich people who want it done now, who would animate the free world? In theory, you want everyone to live peacefully according to their needs, along the banks of a river. In fact, you worry that you'd die of boredom there. In fact, you get a buzz from someone like Carole Potter, who keeps prize chickens and could teach a graduate course in landscaping; who maintains a staff of four (more in the summers, during High Guest Season); a handsome, slightly ridiculous husband; a beautiful daughter at Harvard and an incorrigible son doing something or other on Bondi Beach; Carole who is charming and self-deprecating and capable, if pushed, of a hostile indifference crueler than any form of rage; who reads novels and goes to movies and theater and yes, yes, bless her, buys art, serious art, about which she actually fucking knows a thing or two. By Michael Cunningham World Fact Rich People Animate

It's the city's crush and heave that move you; its intricacy; its endless life. You know the story about Manhattan as a wilderness purchased for strings of beads, but you find it impossible not to believe that it has always been a city; that if you dug beneath it you would find the ruins of another, older city, and then another and another. By Michael Cunningham City Intricacy Life Crush Heave

I was still struggling to invent an alternate version of myself, someone proud and unflinching who could gaze levelly at his father and tell him his last secrets. I wanted him to know me; to have seen me. I'd been waiting until I was settled and fulfilled, so as to present myself in terms of a happiness he might understand. By Michael Cunningham Secrets Struggling Invent Alternate Version

Mizzy has wandered into the garden. Carole looks contemplatively at him, says, "Lovely boy.""My wife's insanely younger brother. He's one of those kids with too much potential, if you know what I mean.""I know exactly what you mean."Further details would be redundant. Peter knows the Potters' story: the pretty, unstoppable daughter who's tearing through her Harvard doctorate versus the older child, the son, who has, it seems, been undone by his good fortune; who at thirty-eight is still surfing and getting stoned by way of occupations, currently in Australia. By Michael Cunningham Mizzy Garden Wandered Mean Lovely

The song is an unvarnished love shout, an implorement tinged with ... anger? Something like anger, but the anger of a philosoher, the anger of a pot. An anger directed at the transience of the world, at its heartbreaking beauty that collides constantly with our awareness of the fact that everything gets taken away, that we're being shown marvels but reminded always that they don't belong to us. They're sultans' treasures; we're lucky, we're expected to feel lucky to have been invited to see them at all. By Michael Cunningham Anger Shout Song Unvarnished Love

Here's the sting of livingness. He's back after his nightly voyage of sleep, all clarity and purpose; he's renewed his citizenship in the world of people who strive and connect, people who mean business, people who burn and want, who remember everything, who walk lucid and unafraid. By Michael Cunningham People Livingness Sting Sleep Purpose

And here he is, letting the massive steel street door click shut behind him, standing at the top of the three iron steps that lead down to the shattered sidewalk. New York is probably, in this regard at least, the strangest city in the world, so many of its denizens living as they (we) do among the unreconstructed remnants of nineteenth-century sweatshops and tenements, the streets potholed and buckling while right over there, around the corner, is a Chanel boutique. We go shopping amid the rubble, like the world's richest, best-dressed refugees. By Michael Cunningham Letting Standing Sidewalk Massive Steel

There are two of you now. Neither is sufficient unto itself, but you learn, over time, to join your two halves together, and hobble around. There are limits to what you can do, though you're able to get from place to place. Each half, naturally enough, requires the cooperation of the other, and you find yourself getting snappish with yourself; you find yourself cursing yourself for your clumsiness, your overeagerness, your lack of consideration for your other half. You feel it doubly. Still, you go on. Still, you step in tandem, make your slow and careful way up and down the stairs, admonishing, warning, each of you urging the other to slow down, or speed up, or wait a second. What else can you do? Each would be helpless without the other. Each would be stranded, laid flat, abandoned, bereft. By Michael Cunningham Half Find Place Slow Learn

Unfamiliar insects produced a soft but insistent chirp; a crisp whir like the sound the earth itself might make rolling through the darkness if we all kept quiet enough to hear it. The lights of the condominium complex shone. They were not far away. Still, they looked almost too real and close to touch. They were like holes punched in the night, leaking light from another, more animated world. For a moment I could imagine what it would be like to be a ghost - to walk forever through a silence deeper than silence, to apprehend but never quite reach the lights of home. By Michael Cunningham Unfamiliar Chirp Insects Produced Soft

Yes, she answers and does not move. She might, at this moment, be nothing but a floating intelligence; not even a brain inside a skull, just a presence that perceives, as a ghoast might. Yes, she thinks, this is probably how it must feel to be a ghost. It's a little like reading, isn't it-that same sensation of knowing people, settings, situations, without playing any particular part beyond that of the willing observer. By Michael Cunningham Move Answers Moment Intelligence Skull

He feels, as he sometimes does, as most people must, a presence in the room, what he can only think of as his and Rebecca's living ghosts, the amalgamation of their dreams and their breathing, their smells. He does not believe in ghosts, but he believes in ... something. Something viable, something living, that's surprised when he wakes at this hour, that's neither glad nor sorry to see him awake but that recognizes the fact, because it has been interrupted in its nocturnal inchoate musings. By Michael Cunningham Rebecca Ghosts Feels Room Breathing

This, Barrett Meeks, is your work. You witness, and compile. You persevere. By Michael Cunningham Barrett Meeks Work Witness Compile

I remember one morning getting up at dawn. There was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling. And I ... 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 ... never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment, right then. By Michael Cunningham Dawn Morning Remember Happiness Beginning

Maybe it's not, in the end, the virtues of others that so wrenches our hearts as it is the sense of almost unbearably poignant recognition when we see them at their most base, in their sorrow and gluttony and foolishness. You need the virtues, too - some sort of virtues - but we don't care about Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina or Raskolnikov because they're good. We care about them because they're not admirable, because they're us, and because great writers have forgiven them for it. By Michael Cunningham Virtues End Base Foolishness Wrenches

If I die tomorrow, Provincetown is where I'd want my ashes scattered. Who knows why we fall in love, with places or people, with objects or ideas? Thirty centuries of literature haven't begun to solve the mystery; nor have they in any way slaked our interest in it. Provincetown is a mysterious place, and those of us who love it tend to do so with a peculiar, inscrutable intensity. By Michael Cunningham Provincetown Tomorrow Scattered Die Ashes

The vestibule door opens onto a June morning so fine and scrubbed Classira pauses at the threshold as she would at the edge of a pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the tiles, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths. As if standing at the edge of a pool she delays for a moment the plunge, the quick membrane of chill, the plain shock of immersion. By Michael Cunningham June Classira Edge Pool Watching

What I wanted to do seemed simple. I wanted something alive and shocking enough that it could be a morning in somebody's life. The most ordinary morning. Imagine, trying to do that. By Michael Cunningham Simple Wanted Morning Imagine Life

Die young, stay pretty. Blondie, right? We think of it as a modern phenomenon, the whole youth thing, but really, consider all those great portraits, some of them centuries old. Those goddesses of Botticelli and Rubens, Goya's Maja, Madame X. Consider Manet's Olympia, which shocked at the time, he having painted his mistress with the same voluptuous adulation generally reserved for the aristocratic good girls who posed for depictions of goddesses. Hardly anyone knows anymore, and no one cares, that Olympia was Manet's whore; although there's every reason to imagine that, in life, she was foolish and vulgar and not entirely hygienic (Paris in the 1860s being what it was). She's immortal now, she's a great historic beauty, having been scrubbed clean by the attention of a great artist. And okay, we can't help but notice that Manet did not choose to paint her twenty years later, when time had started doing its work. The world has always worshipped nascence. Goddamn the world. By Michael Cunningham Manet Die Young Stay Pretty

Heaven only knows why we love it so. By Michael Cunningham Heaven Love

He'll be successful, finally, this coming Sunday, at the modest ceremony to be held in the living room. It's all so clear. Tyler will write a beautiful, meaningful song. Barrett will find a love that abides, and work that matters. And Liz. Liz will tire of boys, tire of her resolution to grow into a tough, colorful old woman who lives defiantly alone. By Michael Cunningham Sunday Finally Successful Room Coming

They hope they'll learn to be happier together. They also yearn, sometimes, for the point at which misery becomes so profound as to leave them no alternative. By Michael Cunningham Hope Learn Happier Yearn Alternative

In heaven, Lucas would be beautiful. He'd speak a language everyone understood. By Michael Cunningham Lucas Heaven Beautiful Understood Speak

Venture too far for love ... and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port. By Michael Cunningham Venture Love Renounce Citizenship Country

Virginia Woolf's great novel, 'Mrs. Dalloway,' is the first great book I ever read. I read it almost by accident when I was in high school, when I was 15 years old. By Michael Cunningham Mrs Dalloway Woolf Great Virginia

At the risk, then, of being shunned by some of my gloomier peers, I venture to tell you that writers work like demons, suffer greatly, and are also happy, in unmistakable ways, some of the time. If we had no knowledge of happiness, our novels wouldn't sufficiently resemble real life. Some of us are even made a little bit happy, on occasion, by the writing process itself. I mean, really, if there wasn't some sort of enjoyment to be derived, would any of us keep doing it? By Michael Cunningham Happy Risk Peers Demons Suffer

As any student of literature knows, the books that last are often not the books that are most popular when they are written. Both 'Moby Dick' and 'The Great Gatsby' were complete failures, critically and commercially, when they first appeared. By Michael Cunningham Books Written Student Literature Popular

She'd never imagined it like this-when she thought of someone (a woman like herself)losing her mind, she'd imagined shrieks and wails, hallucinations; but at that moment it had seemed clear that there was another way, far quieter; a way that was numb and hopeless, flat, so much so that an emotion as strong as sorrow would have been a relief. By Michael Cunningham Hallucinations Flat Imagined Losing Mind

It's your life, quite possibly your only one. Still you find yourself having a vodka at three a.m., waiting for your pill to kick in, with time ticking through you and your own ghost already wandering among your rooms. By Michael Cunningham Life Possibly Waiting Rooms Find

I'm talking about a little truth-in-packaging here. To be perfectly frank, you don't quite look like yourself. And if you walk around looking like someone other than who you are, you could end up getting the wrong job, the wrong friends, who knows what-all. You could end up with somebody else's life."I shrugged again, and smiled. "This is my life," I said. "It doesn't seem like the wrong one. By Michael Cunningham Wrong Talking End Frank Perfectly

The book worm, the foreign-looking one with the dark, close set eyes an the Roman nose, who had never been sought after or cherished; who had always been left alone, to read. By Michael Cunningham Roman Worm Dark Close Nose

From Labor Day through Halloween, the place is almost unbearably beautiful. The air during these weeks seems less like ether and more like a semisolid, clear and yet dense somehow, as if it were filled with the finest imaginable golden pollen. The sky tends toward brilliant ice-blue, and every thing and being is invested with a soft, gold-ish glow. Tin cans look good in this light; discarded shopping bags do. I'm not poet enough to tell you what the salt marsh looks like at high tide. I confess that when I lived year-round in Provincetown, I tended to become irritable toward the end of October, when one supernal day after another seemed to imply that the only reasonable human act was to abandon your foolish errands and plans, go outside, and fall to your knees. By Michael Cunningham Halloween Labor Beautiful Place Unbearably

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. By Michael Cunningham Light Drawn Flame Side Fact

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? By Michael Cunningham Report Asks Word Vexations Vexing

Before there was any talk of a movie, people would sometimes ask me what actors I would imagine playing these characters. And the only thing I could ever say is: I have such a clear idea of these characters that they'd have to play themselves. By Michael Cunningham Movie People Characters Talk Actors

Heaven winked at you, right? Maybe. Maybe it did. Or maybe it was just an airplane and a cloud. But if heaven winks at anybody, it's probably the less-than-conspicious seekers; the ones who choose the path over the avenue, the gap in the hedge over the trumpeted gates. That's probably why there's no verifiable evidence, right? The universe only winks at the ones no one will believe. By Michael Cunningham Winked Heaven Winks Seekers Cloud

I suppose at heart it was the haircut that did it; that exploded the ordinary order of things and showed me the possibilities that had been there all along, hidden among the patterns in the wallpaper. In a different age, we used to take acid for more or less the same reason. By Michael Cunningham Hidden Wallpaper Suppose Heart Haircut

Do you imagine, Peter, that your Carpe Diem boots would look any less deluded to them than that guy's Tony Lamas do to you? There's a comeuppance for everyone, wherever you are, and the farther you go from your own fiefdom, the more ludicrous are your haircut, your clothes, your opinions, your life. Within easy walking distance of home are neighborhoods that might as well be in Saigon. By Michael Cunningham Peter Carpe Diem Tony Lamas

He moved in a world of chaos of self, fearful and astonished to be here, right here, alive in a pine-paneled bedroom. By Michael Cunningham Fearful Alive Bedroom Moved World

I feel like there's something terrible and wonderful and amazing that's just beyond my grasp. I have dreams about it. I do dream, by the way. It hovers over me at odd moments. And then it's gone. I feel like I'm always on the brink of something that never arrives. I want to either have it or be free of it. By Michael Cunningham Grasp Terrible Wonderful Amazing Feel

The world is full of Gusesgood-looking boys and girls who've been dealt the best possible genetic hand by parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who have been doing neither well nor badly for generations; who engender these decent kids and give them just enough to survive in the world but no moreno spectacular beauty, no uncontainable brilliance, no kingly, unstoppable ambition.Isn't it the task of art to acclaim these people, to ennoble them? Consider Olympia. A girl of the streets becomes a deity. By Michael Cunningham World Gusesgoodlooking Unstoppable Generations Beauty

Better, then, to go light on the sexual particulars, and think instead of who's winning and who's losing at any given point. How is power being exchanged here? I want to say, "Who's on top?" But that would of course be sleazy, and just generally beneath me ... By Michael Cunningham Point Light Sexual Winning Losing

Peter's mother was grand, in her way. She managed to complain almost ceaselessly without ever seeming trivial or kvetchy. She was regal rather than crotchety, she had been sent to live in this world from a better one, and she saved herself from mere mean-spiritedness by offering resignation in place of bile - by implying, every hour of her life, that although she objected to almost everybody and everythng she did so because she'd presided over some utopia, and so knew from experience how much better we all could do. She wanted more than anything to live under a benevolent dictator who was exactly like her without being her - if she actually ruled she would relinquish her right to object, and without her right to object who and what would she be? By Michael Cunningham Peter Grand Mother Live Object

Barrett strokes one of the chair's slick, bile-green arms. "You can get attached to just about anything, can't you?" he says. By Michael Cunningham Barrett Slick Bilegreen Arms Strokes

There's the appeal of the young thief who robs you, and climbs back down off your cloud. It's possible to love that boy, in a wistful and hopeless way. It's possible to love his greed and narcissism, to grant him that which is beyond your own capacities: heedlessness, cockiness, a self-devotion so pure it borders on the divine. By Michael Cunningham Cloud Appeal Young Thief Robs

Like the morning you walked out of that old house, when you were eighteen and I was, well, I had just turned nineteen, hadn't I? I was a nineteen-year-old and I was in love with Louis and I was in love with you, and I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful as the sight of you walking out a glass door in the early morning, still sleepy, in your underwear. Isn't it strange? By Michael Cunningham Morning House Nineteen Love Walked

She'd never been religious. She hadn't allowed grief to send her crawling to the church. By Michael Cunningham Religious Church Allowed Grief Send

The only difference was one of them was trying to make a perfect cake and one of them was trying to write a great book. But if we remove that from the equation, it's the same impulse and they are equally entitled to their ecstasies and their despair. By Michael Cunningham Book Difference Make Perfect Cake

Outside the house is a world where the shelves are stocked, where radio waves are full of music, where young men walk the streets again, men who have deprievation and a fear worse than death, who have willingly given up their early twenties and now, thinking of thirty and beyond, haven't any time to spare. By Michael Cunningham Men Stocked Music Death Thinking

She pauses several treads from the bottom, listening, waiting; she is again possessed (it seems to be getting worse) by a dream-like feeling, as if she is standing in the wings, about to go onstage and perform in a play for which she is not appropriately dressed, and for which she has not adequately rehearsed. By Michael Cunningham Listening Waiting Bottom Possessed Worse

And so, he knows. He wants, he needs, to do the immoral, irresponsible thing. He wants to let this boy court his own destruction. He wants to commit that cruelty. Or (kinder, gentler version) he doesn't want to reconfirm his allegiance to the realm of the sensible, all the good people who take responsibility, who go to the right and necessary parties, who sell art made of two-by-fours and carpet remnants. He wants, for at least a little while, to live in that other, darker world - Blake's London, Courbet's Paris; raucous, unsanitary places where good behavior was the province of decent, ordinary people who produced no works of genius. By Michael Cunningham People Good Immoral Irresponsible Thing

He could see himself selling himself as a compelling mutation, a young god, proud to the point of sexy arrogance of his anatomical deviation: ninety percent thriving muscled man-flesh and ten percent glorious blindingly white angel wing.Baby, these feathers are going to tickle you halfway to heaven, and this man-part is going to take you the rest of the way. By Michael Cunningham Percent Mutation God Proud Deviation

THE PILGRIM MOTHERS AND FATHERS Provincetown's first settlers were, in fact, the Pilgrims, who sailed the Mayflower into Provincetown Harbor in 1620. They spent the winter there but, finding too little fresh water, sailed that spring to Plymouth, which has gone into the history books as the Pilgrims' initial point of disembarkation. Provincetown is, understandably, not happy about this misrepresentation of the facts. By Michael Cunningham Mothers Fathers Mayflower Harbor Provincetown

She doesn't really want to go far, she just wants the solitude, the public solitude, of the street; the un-company of passing strangers, no one embracing her, no one looking with compassion and wonder into her eyes, no one marvelling at her. By Michael Cunningham Solitude Street Strangers Eyes Public

This moment may come to us all, at some point in our eventutal move from health into sickness. We abandon our old obligation to consider the needs of others, and give ourselves up to their care. There is a shift in status. We become citizens of a new realm, and although we retain the best and worst of our former selves we are no longer bodily in command of our fates. By Michael Cunningham Sickness Moment Point Eventutal Move

She's had a long life. Now she's going to the Lord." "Frankly it creeps me out a little when you say things like that," Simon said. "It shouldn't. If you don't like 'Lord,' pick another word. She's going home. She's going back to the party. Whatever you like." "I suppose you have some definite ideas about an afterlife." "Sure. We get reabsorbed into the earthly and celestial mechanism." "No heaven?" "That's heaven." "What about realms of glory? What about walking around in golden slippers?" "We abandon consciousness as if we were waking from a bad dream. We throw it off like clothes that never fit us right. It's an ecstatic release we're physically unable to apprehend while we're in our bodies. Orgasm is our best hint, but it's crude and minor by comparison. By Michael Cunningham Lord Life Long Frankly Simon

He insists on a version of you that is funnier, stranger, more eccentric and prfound thatn you suspect yourself to becapable of doing more good and more harm in the world than you've ever imaginedit is all but impossible not to believe, at least in his presence and a while after you've left him, that he alone sees through your essence, weighs your true qualities ... and appreciates you more fully than anyone else ever has. By Michael Cunningham Stranger Funnier Essence Weighs Qualities

Gus the driver is everywhere and yet he appears nowhere, not in portraits or photographs, not even in the stories of men like Barthelme and Carver, who were all about guys with jobs and prospects like Gus's but who insisted on more sorrow, more angst, than Gus remotely manifests. If Gus weeps sometimes for no reason, if he stands despairing in the aisle of a Wal-Mart, it is not apparent in his daily demeanor ... By Michael Cunningham Gus Carver Barthelme Photographs Sorrow

Love, it seems, arrives not only unannounced, but so accidentally, so randomly, as to make you wonder why you, why anyone, believes even fleetingly in laws of cause and effect By Michael Cunningham Love Arrives Unannounced Accidentally Randomly

He seemed to believe that from such humble, inert elements as flour, shortening, and drab little envelopes of yeast, life itself could be produced. By Michael Cunningham Shortening Humble Inert Flour Yeast

Fearlessness in the face of your own ineptitude is a useful tool to have. By Michael Cunningham Fearlessness Face Ineptitude Tool

I used to want to be a cheerleader," I told them. "Before I decided to just go to hell. By Michael Cunningham Cheerleader Told Hell Decided

She simply does what her daughter tells her to, and finds a surprising relief in it. Maybe, she thinks, one could begin dying into this: the ministrations of a grown daughter, the comforts of a room. Here, then, is age. Here are the little consolations, the lamp and the book. Here is the world, increasingly managed by people who are not you; who will do either well or badly; who do not look at you when they pass you in the street. By Michael Cunningham Daughter Simply Finds Surprising Relief

She, Laura, likes to imagine (it's one of her most closely held secrets) that she has a touch of brilliance herself, just a hint of it, though she knows most people probably walk around with similar hopeful suspicions curled up like tiny fists inside them, never divulged. She wonders, while she pushes a cart through the supermarket or has her hair done, it the other women aren't all thinking, to some degree or other, the same thing: Here is the brilliant spirit, the woman of sorrows, the woman of transcendent joys, who would rather be elsewhere, who has consented to perform simple and essentially foolish tasks, to examine tomatoes, to sit under a hair dryer, because it is her art and her duty. By Michael Cunningham Laura Imagine Secrets Divulged Woman

Here is what unsayable about us: Jonathan and I are members of a team so old nobody else could join even if we wanted them to. What binds us is stronger than sex. It is stronger than love. We're related. Each of us is the other born into a different flesh. By Michael Cunningham Jonathan Stronger Unsayable Members Team

There's no denying his resemblance to the Rodin bronze - the slender, effortless muscularity of youth, the extravagant nonchalance of it; that sense that beauty is in fact the natural human condition and not the rarest of mutations. By Michael Cunningham Rodin Bronze Slender Effortless Youth

Utter objectivity ... is not only impossible when judging literature, it's not exactly desirable. Fiction involves trace elements of magic; it works for reasons we can explain and also for reasons we can't. If novels or short-story collections could be weighed strictly in terms of their components (fully developed characters, check; original voice, check; solidly crafted structure, check; serious theme, check) they might satisfy, but they would fail to enchant. A great work of fiction involves a certain frisson that occurs when its various components cohere and then ignite.(Source: "Letter from the Pulitzer Fiction Jury: What Really Happened This Year" in The New Yorker.) By Michael Cunningham Check Fiction Utter Objectivity Literature

We worship numberless gods or idols, but we all need to be the grandest possible versions of ourselves, we need to walk across the face of the earth with as much grace and beauty as we can muster before we're wrapped in our winding sheets, and returned. By Michael Cunningham Idols Sheets Returned Worship Numberless

But then again, in addition to paper and cardboard ... a little illuminated box, that contains thousands and thousands of stories? People aren't fascinated by that? Really? By Michael Cunningham Cardboard Addition Paper Thousands Box

It's the world, you live in it, even if some boy has made a fool of you. By Michael Cunningham World Live Boy Made Fool

Oh, all you immigrants and visionaries, what do you hope to find here, who do you hope to become? By Michael Cunningham Hope Visionaries Immigrants Find

All over China, parents tell their children to stop complaining and to finish their quadratic equations and trigonometric functions because there are sixty-five million American kids going to bed with no math at all. By Michael Cunningham China American Parents Children Stop

End of story. 'Happily ever after' fell on everyone like a guillotine's blade. By Michael Cunningham End Story Happily Fell Blade

You want to give him the book of his own life, the book that will locate him, parent him, arm him for the changes. By Michael Cunningham Book Life Parent Arm Give

Have faith that you will be here, recognizable to yourself, again tomorrow. By Michael Cunningham Recognizable Tomorrow Faith

Most of us are safe. If you're not a delirious dream the gods are having, if your beauty doesn't trouble the constellations, nobody's going to cast a spell on you. By Michael Cunningham Safe Constellations Delirious Dream Gods

I know you. I've seen it. And, knowing all, I release you. By Michael Cunningham Knowing Release

I know a conquistador when I see one. I know all about making a splash. It isn't hard. If you shout loud enough, for long enough, a crowd will gather to see what all the noise is about. It's the nature of crowds. They don't stay long, unless you give them reason. By Michael Cunningham Conquistador Long Splash Hard Making

It is the Morocco of America, the New Orleans of the north. By Michael Cunningham America Morocco Orleans North

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. By Michael Cunningham Hours God

Welcome to the darker side of love. By Michael Cunningham Love Darker Side

This is a Southern gift, isn't it - tremendous self-regard diluted with humor and modesty. That's what they mean by Southern charm, right? By Michael Cunningham Southern Gift Tremendous Modesty Selfregard

It seems that she can survive, she can prosper, if she has London around her. By Michael Cunningham London Survive Prosper

Youth is the only sexy tragedy. It's James Dean jumping into his Porsche Spyder, it's Marilyn heading off to bed. By Michael Cunningham Youth Tragedy Spyder Sexy James

Morning, Peter," she callsfrom the back, in her exaggerated German accent. Mawning, Pedder.She's been in the States more than fifteen years now, but heraccent has gotten heavier. Uta is a member of what seems to be agrowing body of defiantly unassimilated expatriates. She on onehand disdains her country of origin (Darling, the word "lugubrious"comes to mind) but on the other seems to grow more German (morenot-American) with every passing year. ... Because Uta is German, utterly German, which of course is probably why she leftthere, and insists that she'll never go back. By Michael Cunningham Peter German Morning Accent Uta

Right now she is reading Virginia Woolf, all of Virginia Woolf, book by book-She is fascinated by the idea of a woman like that, a woman of such brilliance, such strangeness, such immeasurable sorrow; a woman who had genius but still filled her pocket with a stone and waded out into a river. By Michael Cunningham Woolf Virginia Woman Book Brilliance

The Taylors have this gift for imperturbable presence. They are not nervous talkers. The Harrises, on the other hand, have always been constant talkers, not so much for the sake of entertainment or information but because if a silence caught and held for too long they might have fallen into a bottomless sullen discord, a frozen mutual quietude that could never be broken because there never had been and never would be a shared topic of sufficient reviving urgency (not at least one either of his parents could bear to broach), and so they needed to hydroplane forward together on an ever-replenished slick of remark and opinion ... By Michael Cunningham Taylors Presence Talkers Gift Imperturbable

You don't necessarily meet a lot of people in this world. Not when you let yourself get distracted by music and the passing of hours. By Michael Cunningham World Necessarily Meet Lot People

One of the troubles with love is, you can't talk about it without feeling like you keep cueing old songs. By Michael Cunningham Songs Troubles Love Talk Feeling

... Andrew, who, in the wry of certain gods, couldn't care less about human squabblings; who literally fails to understand them. There are all these fruits, there's water and sky, there's enough for everyone, what could you possibly have to argue about? By Michael Cunningham Andrew Gods Squabblings Fruits Sky

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. By Michael Cunningham Children People Commit Acts Story

I see myself..in those pages as she goes back and forth, enjoying simply enjoying the beauties of the moments then chastising herself for having 'no edge' being simple and worse, harmless. By Michael Cunningham Harmless Myself Edge Worse Enjoying

Julian is bluff and sturdy, royal; he possesses a gracefully muscular, equine beauty so natural it suggests that beauty itself is a fundamental human condition and not a mutation in the general design. By Michael Cunningham Royal Beauty Julian Sturdy Muscular

Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear. By Michael Cunningham Language Music Fiction Made Equal

Who knows what succession of girls and boys sneak in through the sliding glass doors at night, after the mother has sunk to the bottom of her own private lake, with the help of Absolut and Klonopin? By Michael Cunningham Klonopin Absolut Night Lake Succession

He's one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won't, possibly can't, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time. By Michael Cunningham Arts Smart Drifty Deliberations Decides

This love of theirs, with its reassuring domesticity and its easy silences, its permanence, has yoked Sally directly to the machinery of mortality itself. Now there is a loss beyond imagining. By Michael Cunningham Sally Silences Permanence Love Reassuring

You know, if you're hopeful, if you're even a little bit happy about something that might happen, it doesn't affect the outcome. You could still give yourself a period of optimism, even if it all falls apart. By Michael Cunningham Hopeful Happen Outcome Bit Happy

Sometimes the fabric that separates us tears just enough for love to shine through. Sometimes the tear is surprisingly small. By Michael Cunningham Fabric Separates Love Shine Small

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. By Michael Cunningham Great Krakatoa Nazism Art War

Men may congratulate themselves for writing truly and passionately about the movements of nations; they may consider war and the search for God to be great literature's only subjects; but if men's standing in the world could be toppled by an ill-advised choice of hat, English literature would be dramatically changed. By Michael Cunningham English God Men Literature Nations

It seems good enough; parts seem very good indeed. She has lavish hopes, of course - she wants this to be her best book, the one that finally matches her expectations. By Michael Cunningham Parts Good Hopes Book Expectations

It is only after knowing him for some time that you begin to realize you are, to him, an essentially fictional character, one he has invested with nearly limitless capacities for tragedy and comedy not because that is your true nature but because he, Richard, needs to live in a world peopled by extreme and commanding figures. By Michael Cunningham Richard Character Figures Knowing Time

That summer when she was eighteen, it seemed anything could happen, anything at all. By Michael Cunningham Eighteen Happen Summer

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. By Michael Cunningham Man Graveyards Afraid Things People

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. By Michael Cunningham Secret Book Novelists Honest Write

She lays the book face down on her chest. Already her bedroom (no, their bedroom) feels more densely inhabited, more actual, because a character named Mrs. Dalloway is on her way to buy flowers. By Michael Cunningham Chest Bedroom Lays Book Face

He needs a looser association. He needs something that implies a man who wants the ice shard to remain in his chest, who's learned to love the sensation of being pierced. By Michael Cunningham Association Looser Chest Pierced Implies

I had blundered again, obscurely, and rather than go on worrying over my behavior, I decided to just give in and dislike Alice. By Michael Cunningham Obscurely Alice Behavior Blundered Worrying

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. By Michael Cunningham Leonard Dear Life Face Years

Parents are the mystified criminals, blinking in the docks, making it all the worse for themselves with every word they utter. By Michael Cunningham Parents Criminals Blinking Docks Making

He makes her think sometimes of a mouse singing amorous ballads under the window of a giantess. By Michael Cunningham Giantess Makes Mouse Singing Amorous

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. By Michael Cunningham Translators Encourage Books License Feel

Sure, go ahead, simulate life, using only ink and paper. By Michael Cunningham Ahead Simulate Life Paper Ink

The art we produce lives in queasy balance with the art we can imagine the art the room expects. By Michael Cunningham Art Expects Produce Lives Queasy

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. By Michael Cunningham Age Beginning Understand True Difference

Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am. By Michael Cunningham Love Night Wind Rain Doomed

If you've really loved a book, or a movie for that matter, really loved it, what you want is that same book again, but as if you've never read it. And when you get something unfamiliar, you feel betrayed. By Michael Cunningham Loved Book Matter Movie Read

Tyler. His handsome, lion-eyed ravagement. His capacity for devotion. Which is so sexy. Why do so many gay men lack that? Why are they so distracted, so in love with the idea of more and more and then more, again? By Michael Cunningham Tyler Handsome Lioneyed Ravagement Devotion

If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark. And that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too. By Michael Cunningham Dark Leonard Live Thinking Wrestle

A full week of their mother's quiet fury over the fun they don't seem to be having and their father's dogged attempts to provide it ... By Michael Cunningham Full Week Mother Quiet Fury

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. By Michael Cunningham Live Richly Deeply Kind Gifts

Zoe loved Trancas's mother. She respected her exhausted and ironic hope for rebirth. By Michael Cunningham Trancas Zoe Mother Loved Rebirth

Isn't the universe full of gaseous elements?"Andrew says, "Yeah, there are gases and neutrinos and this shit they call dark matter. By Michael Cunningham Yeah Andrew Elements Matter Universe

What she wants to say has to do not only with joy but with the penetrating, constant fear that is joy's other half. By Michael Cunningham Penetrating Constant Half Joy Fear

And so, a never-ending, rather edgy conversation between them, an undercurrent of roiling sound that reminded them they were married, they had two sons, they were living a life, they had preparations to make and disasters to avert and a world to interpret, sign by sign, symbol by symbol, to each other, and that at this point the only fate worse than staying together would be trying, each of them, to live alone. By Michael Cunningham Sign Symbol Neverending Married Sons

Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest. By Michael Cunningham Dead Dimensions Modest Revealed True

Where did the boy genius go? He had been, as a child, expected to be a neurosurgeon, or a great novelist. And now he's considering (or, okay, refusing to consider) law school. Was the burden of his potential too much for him? By Michael Cunningham Boy Genius Child Expected Neurosurgeon

He demands that his mother pick him up so he can see the soldiers better; so he will be more visible to them. All this enters the bridge, resounds through its wood and stone, and enters Virginia's body. Her face, pressed sideways to the piling, absorbs it all: the truck and the soldiers, the mother and the child. By Michael Cunningham Soldiers Demands Pick Visible Mother

The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things. By Michael Cunningham Things Great Artists Books Write

Sanity involves a certain measure of impersonation, not simply for the benefit of husband and servants but for the sake, first and foremost, of one's own convictions. By Michael Cunningham Sanity Impersonation Sake Foremost Convictions

There's no comfort, it seems, in the world of objects. By Michael Cunningham Comfort Objects World

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper. By Michael Cunningham Paper Book Mind Manage

I know, speaking for myself, no matter what I'm able to do, no matter what book comes out and ends up on paper, I always had something bigger and grander in my head. By Michael Cunningham Matter Speaking Paper Head Book

God save us from people who think they're smarter than they actually are. By Michael Cunningham God Save People Smarter

However multilingual we may be as readers, we find ourselves faced with a fundamental, inescapable responsibility. We must understand that any book & especially a great one is a complex & highly personal exchange between its writer & its readers. None of us reads precisely the same book, even if the words are identical. Readers too, are part of the ongoing process of translation that begins in the author's mind. By Michael Cunningham Fundamental Inescapable Responsibility Readers Book

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. By Michael Cunningham Failure Loved Cake Appreciated Intentions

Writing in that state is the most profound satisfaction she knows, but her access to it comes and goes without warning. She may pick up her pen and follow it with her hand as it moves across the paper; she may pick up her pen and find she's merely herself, a woman in a housecoat holding a pen, afraid and uncertain, only mildly competent, with no idea about where to begin or what to write. She picks up her pen By Michael Cunningham Pen Writing Warning Pick State

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. By Michael Cunningham Choice Regret Bear Death Life

A celestial light appeared to Barrett Meeks in the sky over Central Park, four days after Barrett had been mauled, once again, by love. By Michael Cunningham Park Barrett Meeks Central Mauled

Virginia Woolf came along in the early part of the century and essentially said through her writing, yes, big books can be written about the traditional big subjects. There is war. There is the search for God. These are all very important things. By Michael Cunningham Woolf Big Virginia Writing Subjects

we become the stories we tell ourselves By Michael Cunningham Stories

You have failed in the most base and human of waysyou have not imagined the lives of others. By Michael Cunningham Failed Base Human Waysyou Imagined

Catherine thought Simon was in the locket, and in heaven, and with them still. Lucas hoped she didn't expect him to be happy about having so many Simons to contend with. By Michael Cunningham Catherine Locket Heaven Thought Simon

It's remarkable, being alive. By Michael Cunningham Remarkable Alive

She'll be willing to meet someone who can hold her interest for more than a few months, and that guy will teach her about domestic deepenings, the modest reliable thrill of the familiar, which as almost everyone but Liz knows has been the way of human happiness since humanity was born. By Michael Cunningham Liz Months Deepenings Familiar Born

He believes that a real work of art can be owned but should not be subject to capture; that it should radiate such authority, such bizarre but confident beauty (or unbeauty) that it can't be undone by even the most ludicrous sofas or side tables. A real work of art should rule the room, and the clients should call up not to complain about the art but to say that the art has helped them understand how the room is all a horrible mistake, can Peter suggest a designer to help them start over again. By Michael Cunningham Art Real Work Capture Authority

I don't have any regrets, really, except that one. I wanted to write about you, about us, really. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to write about everything, the life we're having and the lives we might have had. I wanted to write about all the ways we might have died. By Michael Cunningham Wanted Write Regrets Died Life

You can't find peace by avoiding life. By Michael Cunningham Life Find Peace Avoiding

Silly humans. Banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity. By Michael Cunningham Silly Humans Banging Pity Tub

I have no useful theories about love and marriage. By Michael Cunningham Marriage Theories Love

And when somebody comes up to me with big hair and gobs of makeup on and says, 'Can I help you,' it's all I can do not to scream, 'Bitch, you can't even help yourself. By Michael Cunningham Bitch Scream Big Hair Gobs

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. By Michael Cunningham Ceremony Hour Face Party Hours

She will never mention to Leonard that she'd planned on fleeing, even for a few hours. As if he were the one in need of care and comfortas if he were the one in danger. By Michael Cunningham Leonard Fleeing Hours Mention Planned

She is not a writer at all, really; she is merely a gifted eccentric. By Michael Cunningham Eccentric Writer Gifted

A certain slightly cruel disregard for the feelings of living people is simply part of the package. I think a writer, if he's any good, is not an entirely benign entity in the world. By Michael Cunningham Package Slightly Cruel Disregard Feelings

You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally. By Michael Cunningham Anymore Unexceptionally Grow Weary Treated

I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful. By Michael Cunningham Ladylike Manly Altogether Beautiful

She is overtaken by a sensation of unbeing. There is no other word for it. By Michael Cunningham Unbeing Overtaken Sensation Word

I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss. By Michael Cunningham Book Kiss Suspect Reader Great

But magic is sometimes all about knowing where the secret door is, and how to open it. With that, you're gone By Michael Cunningham Magic Knowing Secret Door Open

I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. By Michael Cunningham People Happier

I've been just wondering lately, if this is, you know, it. An apartment and a steady job and some people to love. What more could I want? By Michael Cunningham Wondering Love Apartment Steady Job

He is still, at times, astonished by her. She may be the most intelligent woman in England, he thinks. Her books may be read for centuries. By Michael Cunningham Times Astonished England Centuries Intelligent

The secret of flight is this you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws. By Michael Cunningham Immediately Laws Secret Flight Body

It's the country that would have him, since he lacked the necessary papers for more promising places. By Michael Cunningham Places Country Lacked Papers Promising

This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw material at hand. By Michael Cunningham Hand Make Future Raw Material

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions. By Michael Cunningham Constantly Draft Revise Finished Sentence

What did Shakespeare say? Or little lives are rounded with a sleep. By Michael Cunningham Shakespeare Sleep Lives Rounded

I'm just a child who's learned to impersonate an adult. By Michael Cunningham Adult Child Learned Impersonate

She has failed. She wishes she didn't mind. Something, she thinks, is wrong with her. By Michael Cunningham Failed Mind Wishes Wrong

Youth is the only sexy tragedy. By Michael Cunningham Youth Tragedy Sexy

There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. By Michael Cunningham Perfection Time Singular Perfect Part

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. By Michael Cunningham Kind Love Hoped Knew Forgave

There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be. By Michael Cunningham World Beauty Harsher Expect

If she were religious, she would call it the soul. It is more than the sum of her intellect and her emotions, more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three. It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance By Michael Cunningham Religious Soul Sum Call Emotions

I'm sure there are people who are content to run errands and report for work on time and wait, with an enlivening eagerness, for the lunch bell. I wish them well. They have, however, never been the subjects of novels, and in all likelihood, will never be. By Michael Cunningham Wait Eagerness Bell People Content

She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself. By Michael Cunningham Life Potent Dangerous Literature

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? By Michael Cunningham Accept Men Streak Homoerotic Straight

Love is deep, a mystery - who wants to understand its every particular? By Michael Cunningham Love Deep Mystery Understand

What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story? By Michael Cunningham Story Longer Hero

Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. By Michael Cunningham Venture Love Renounce Citizenship Country

Visions are answers. Answers imply questions. It By Michael Cunningham Visions Answers Questions Imply

She is an attractive, robust, fleshy, large-headed woman several years younger than Laura (it seems that every one, suddenly, is at least slightly younger than she). By Michael Cunningham Robust Fleshy Suddenly Laura Younger

Women are kind of screwed, in the world, Andrew says. By Michael Cunningham Andrew Women Screwed World Kind

It's impossible to imagine, isn't it? Most men probably go through the same motions, more or less, but what's in their minds, what agitates their blood? What could be more mortifyingly personal, what veers closer to the depths, than whatever it is that makes us come? If we knew, if we could see what's in the cartoon balloons over other guy's heads as they jerk off, would we be moved, or repelled? By Michael Cunningham Imagine Impossible Motions Minds Blood

Our hopes may seem unrealized, but we were in all likelihood hoping for the wrong thing. By Michael Cunningham Unrealized Thing Hopes Likelihood Hoping

Please, God, send me something to adore. By Michael Cunningham God Send Adore

Beauty is a whore. I prefer money. By Michael Cunningham Beauty Whore Money Prefer

The implication of this particular tale is: Trust strangers. Believe in magic. By Michael Cunningham Trust Strangers Implication Tale Magic

I love movies, I love television, I love narratives of all kinds. By Michael Cunningham Love Movies Television Kinds Narratives

He's filled with a sense of childish release, the old feeling that because you are sick, all your trials and obligations have been suspended. By Michael Cunningham Release Sick Suspended Filled Sense

It's better, really, to go out in a blaze. That's why we love Marilyn, and James Dean. We love the ones who walk right into the fire. By Michael Cunningham Blaze Marilyn Dean Love James

You." "Likewise." They shake hands, head back to the elevator. Groff By Michael Cunningham Likewise Groff Hands Head Elevator

I was not beautiful, but I believed I had the possibility of beauty in me. By Michael Cunningham Beautiful Believed Possibility Beauty

What he remembers with perfect clarity is sitting on a train headed for Madrid, feeling the sort of happiness he imagines spirits might feel, freed of their earthly bodies but still possessed of their essential selves. By Michael Cunningham Madrid Feeling Feel Freed Remembers

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end. But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. By Michael Cunningham End Talk Beginning Talking Heard

I just don't feel much interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous. By Michael Cunningham Famous Feel Interested Lifestyles Rich

Maybe there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together. By Michael Cunningham Equal Recollection Young

It was either the wind or the spirit of the house itself, briefly unsettled by our nocturnal absence but to old to be surprised by the errands born from the gap between what we can imagine and what we can in fact create. By Michael Cunningham Briefly Create Wind Spirit House

Beauty - the beauty Peter craves - is this, then: a human bundle of accidental grace and doom and hope. Mizzy must have hope, he must, he wouldn't shine like this if he were in true despair, and of course he's young, who in this world despairs more exquisitely than the young, it's something the old tend to forget. By Michael Cunningham Peter Beauty Hope Craves Young

The point of sex is... Sex doesn't have a point. By Michael Cunningham Point Sex

As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers. By Michael Cunningham Sentence Speak Readers Writers Opening

What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run. By Michael Cunningham June Prosperous Thrill Shock Privileged

You don't have to matter any more than you do right now. By Michael Cunningham Matter

Mizzy has, again, wandered into the garden, like a child who feels no fealty to adult conversation. By Michael Cunningham Mizzy Wandered Garden Conversation Child

Beauty is a whore, I like money better. By Michael Cunningham Beauty Whore Money

People are more than you think they are. And they're less, as well. The trick lies in negotiating your way between the two. By Michael Cunningham People Trick Lies Negotiating

I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act. By Michael Cunningham Definition Act Writing Optimistic

You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard. By Michael Cunningham Leonard Life Find Peace Avoiding

Insomniacs know better than anyone how it would be to haunt a house. By Michael Cunningham Insomniacs House Haunt

He knows about damage the way a woman does. He knows, the way a woman knows, how to carry on as if nothing's wrong. By Michael Cunningham Woman Damage Wrong Carry

Who was it who said, the worst thing you can imagine is probably what's already happening? Shrink phrase. Not untrue, though. By Michael Cunningham Happening Worst Thing Imagine Shrink

It's hardly ever the destination we've been anticipating, is it? Our hopes may seem unrealized, but we were in all likelihood hoping for the wrong thing. Where did we - the species, that is - pick up that strange and perverse habit? By Michael Cunningham Anticipating Destination Unrealized Thing Species

You live with the threat of my extinction. I live with it too. By Michael Cunningham Extinction Live Threat

Most of us can be counted on to manage our own undoings. By Michael Cunningham Undoings Counted Manage

One of the reasons ordinary people are incapable of magic is simple dearth of conviction. By Michael Cunningham Conviction Reasons Ordinary People Incapable

Who refuses to distinguish between setback and catastrophe; who worships accomplishment above all else and makes himself unbearable to others because he genuinely believes he can root out and reform every incidence of human fecklessness and mediocrity. By Michael Cunningham Catastrophe Mediocrity Refuses Distinguish Setback

We always worry about the wrong things, don't we? By Michael Cunningham Things Worry Wrong

That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other. By Michael Cunningham People Stay Alive

Remember, Peter: you are some hybrid of friend and hired help. You have latitude, but you can't get uppity. By Michael Cunningham Peter Remember Hybrid Friend Hired

She wants to have baked a cake that banishes sorrow, even if only for a little while. By Michael Cunningham Sorrow Baked Cake Banishes

I think pretty much everybody who says he needs money really and truly needs money. By Michael Cunningham Money Pretty

Who has more power than a child? She can be as cruel as she wants to be. He can't. By Michael Cunningham Child Power Cruel

A writer should always feel like he's in over his head By Michael Cunningham Head Writer Feel

I seem to produce a novel approximately once every three years. By Michael Cunningham Years Produce Approximately

He felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting. By Michael Cunningham Shouting Felt Entering Moment Real

His indiscriminate love feels entirely serious to her, as if everything in the world is part of a vast, inscrutable intention and everything in the world has its own secret name, a name that cannot be conveyed in language but is simply the sight and feel of the thing itself. By Michael Cunningham World Vast Inscrutable Indiscriminate Love

If you live in certain places, in a certain way, you'd better learn to praise the small felicities. By Michael Cunningham Places Felicities Live Learn Praise

That may have been when they took their vows: We are no longer siblings, we are mates, starship survivors, a two-man crew wandering the crags and crevices of a planet that may not be inhabited by anyone but us. By Michael Cunningham Vows Siblings Mates Starship Survivors