Michael Cunningham Quotes

103 quotes in 1537 categories

• 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…
• 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…
• As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.
• 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…
• 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…
• People are more than you think they are. And they're less, as well. The trick lies in negotiating your way between the two.
• I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.
• A certain slightly cruel disregard for the feelings of living people is simply part of the package. I think a writer, if hes any good,…
• I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.
• Sure, go ahead, simulate life, using only ink and paper.
• You can't find peace by avoiding life.
• I just don't feel much interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
• 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,…
• The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.
• 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…
• 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…
• I have no useful theories about love and marriage.
• I love movies, I love television, I love narratives of all kinds.
• I seem to produce a novel approximately once every three years.
• 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…

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