Quotes By Person: Michael Cunningham

“When I was younger all my lovers had been clenched, possessive people. My husband Denny had danced six hours a day, and still despised himself for dilettantism. My lover Helene had had screaming opinions on every subject from women's rights to washing spinach. I myself had had trouble deciding whether or not to wear a hat. In my twenties I'd suspected that if you peeled away my looks and habits and half-dozen strong ideas you'd have found an empty spot where the self ought to be. It had seemed like my worst secret.”

-A Home at the End of the World, Michael Cunningham

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“Sally gets out of the store as quickly as she can, marches toward the subway at Sixty-eighth. She'd like to come home with a gift for Clarissa, but can't imagine what. She'd like to tell Clarissa something, something important, but can't get it phrased. 'I love you' is easy enough. 'I love you' has become almost ordinary, being said not only on anniversaries and birthdays but spontaneously, in bed or at the kitchen sink or even in cabs... Sally and Clarissa are not stingy with their affections, and that of course is good, but now Sally finds that she wants to go home and say something more, something that extends not only beyond the sweet and the comforting but beyond passion itself... If anything happens to Clarissa she, Sally, will go on living but she will not, exactly, survive. She will not be all right. What she wants to say has not only to do with joy but with the penetrating, constant fear that is joy's other half. She can bear the thought of her own death but cannot bear the thought of Clarissa's.”

-The Hours, Michael Cunningham

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“She always surprises you this way, by knowing more than you think she does. Louis wonders if they're calculated, these little demonstrations of self-knowledge that pepper Clarissa's wise, hostessy performance. She seems, at times, to have read your thoughts. She disarms you by saying, essentially, I know what you're thinking and I agree, I'm ridiculous. I'm far less than I could have been and I'd like it to be otherwise but I can't seem to help myself. You find that you move, almost against your will, from being irritated with her to consoling her, helping her back into her performance so that she can be comfortable again and you can resume feeling irritated.”

-The Hours, Michael Cunningham

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“Still, she loves the world for being rude and indestructible, and she knows other people must love it too, poor as well as rich, though no one speaks specifically of the reasons. Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed?”

-The Hours, Michael Cunningham

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“There is true art in this, this command of tea and dinner tables; this animating correctness. Men may congratulate themselves for writing truly and passionately about the movement 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.”

-The Hours, Michael Cunningham

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“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 & expectations, to burst open & 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...There she is with another hour before her.”

-The Hours, Michael Cunningham

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“Yes, Clarissa thinks, it's time for the day to be over. 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 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 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 an expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, thought 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 then anything, for more.”

-The Hours, Michael Cunningham

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