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
book writing artist
The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.
book writing secret
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.
real mean writing
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?
war book writing
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.
writing optimistic thinking
I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.
writing should feels
A writer should always feel like he's in over his head
book reading writing
One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.
regret mean writing
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.
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.