Quotes from Michael Cunningham

A što s beskrajnim trudom da prona?eš ravnotežu izme?u osje?aja i ironije, ljepote i strogosti, i pritom otvoriš pukotinu u supstanci svijeta kroz koju bi mogla zasjati istina za smrtnike?

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.

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.

Barrett strokes one of the chair's slick, bile-green arms. You can get attached to just about anything, can't you? he says.

Laura po Kitty touží. Po její síle, po tom, jak vÄ›cnÄ›, pohodovÄ› pÃ…â"¢ijímá vÅ¡echna svá zklamání, po mihotavých r?žovozlatých svÄ›tlech její utajené osobnosti, po kÃ…â"¢ehkých naÅ¡amponovaných hlubinách jejích vlas?.

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.

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.

I think pretty much everybody who says he needs money really and truly needs money.

It is the Morocco of America, the New Orleans of the north.

I've stayed alive for you. But now you have to let me go

Yes, she thinks, this 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.

She wants to be loved. She wants to be a competent mother reading calmly to her child; she wants to be a wife who sets a perfect table. She does not want, not at all, to be the strange woman, the pathetic creature, full of quirks and rages, solitary, sulking, tolerated but not loved.

I know you. I've seen it. And, knowing all, I release you.

I had blundered again, obscurely, and rather than go on worrying over my behavior, I decided to just give in and dislike Alice.

You don't have to matter any more than you do right now.

I think I know what frightens Clare - a certain ability to invent our own future has been lost. ... Now the good things are the predictable ones, and surprises mean bad news.

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.

She'd never imagined it like this — when she'd 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.

For years, for most of my recollected life, I'd walked carefully over a subterranean well of boredom and hopelessness that lay just beneath the thin outer layer of my imagination. If I'd stood still too long, if I'd given in to repose, I'd have fallen through. So I'd made things, gone to clubs and movies. I'd kept changing my hair.

She will write and write. She will finish this book, then write another. 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.

Non è un fallimento, si dice. Non è un fallimento essere in queste stanze, nella tua pelle, a tagliare i gambi dei fiori. Non è un fallimento, ma ti chiede qualcosa: ti chiede uno sforzo; semplicemente essere, ed essere grata; essere felice (terribile parola).

One of the troubles with love is, you can't talk about it without feeling like you keep cueing old songs.

This determined, abiding fascination is what she thinks of as her soul (an embarrassing, sentimental word, but what else to call it?); the part that might conceivably survive the death of the body.

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.