#h

Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#always #being #being honest #confidence #even

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. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#being #being honest #book #finished #here

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 it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#books #encourage #feel #gesture #heroic

I just don't feel much interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#feel #i #interested #just #lifestyles

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 closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#again #along #behave #closely #constantly

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 if you've never read it. And when you get something unfamiliar, you feel betrayed. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#betrayed #book #feel #get #loved

Gird your hearts with silent fortitude, suffering yet hoping all things. ↗

— Felicia Hemans

#fortitude #hearts #hoping #silent #suffering

The only difference was one of them was trying to make a perfect cake and one of them was trying to write a great book. But if we remove that from the equation, it's the same impulse and they are equally entitled to their ecstasies and their despair. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#cake #despair #difference #entitled #equally

Virginia Woolf's great novel, 'Mrs. Dalloway,' is the first great book I ever read. I read it almost by accident when I was in high school, when I was 15 years old. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#almost #book #ever #first #great

You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire - that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it's just this book. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#book #bright #bubble #cathedral #contains