Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham is an American author 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth6 November 1952
CountryUnited States of America
burst ecstatic living moving ourselves remarkable saying soul spirit strange struck suddenly terrible thinking walking walt whitman
a whole new way of living and thinking about ourselves suddenly burst upon us. And walking through all this, there's Walt Whitman saying 'I find it all remarkable and strange and beautiful'. I was so struck by his ecstatic moving through this terrible place, and I thought he should be the spirit and soul of the book.
moving reading thinking
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.
stars moving silly
Silly humans. Banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity.
moving book believe
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?
brother moving heart
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.
crush believe moving
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.
best conviction full intensity lack passionate worst
the worst are full of passionate intensity while the best lack all conviction.
arty book dignity few march maybe sell shared thousand view whatever
If anything, I thought - and this view was shared by my publisher - that "The Hours" was going to be my arty little book and sell maybe a few thousand copies, and march with whatever dignity it could muster to the remainders tables.
arty book dignity few march maybe sell shared thousand view whatever
If anything, I thought - and this view was shared by my publisher - that ""The Hours"" was going to be my arty little book and sell maybe a few thousand copies, and march with whatever dignity it could muster to the remainders tables.
days dead great horses lying miraculous people regulation saying seven streets trash walked walt worked
People worked seven days for 12-14 hours, there was no regulation of any kind - there were no trash pick-ups, there were dead horses lying in the streets - and through all of this walked our great American whirling dervish, Walt Whitman, saying 'I find it all to my taste, I find it all miraculous and strange, and yes, even beautiful',
creation dogged number powerful various walt
Like any powerful creation, can be used in a number of ways... in this book, which chronicles various dissolutions and breakages, there is still Walt Whitman, the dogged optimist.
But Scott is the only one I've met.
characters clear people playing
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.
books both complete critically great last popular
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.