Philip Glass, like [Virginia] Woolf, is more interested in that which continues than he is in that which begins, climaxes, and ends... Glass and Woolf have both broken out of the traditional realm of the story, whether literary or musical, in favor of something more meditative, less neatly delineated, and more true to life. For me, Glass [finds] in three repeated notes something of [a] rapture of sameness.
Michael CunninghamPerhaps, in the extravagance of youth, we give away our devotions easily and all but arbitrarily, on the mistaken assumption that weโll always have more to give.
Michael CunninghamShe 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.
Michael CunninghamHow we dress is, as far as I can tell, the only inescapably public choice that we have. People don't need to know what you eat, people don't need to know who you have sex with. But there's no escaping what you wear and the fact that you've chosen it. Even if you insist that you don't care about fashion, that's your statement. It's really one realm of life where you are forced to make your own statement.
Michael CunninghamPeople are more than you think they are. And they're less, as well. The trick lies in negotiating your way between the two.
Michael CunninghamMaybe itโs not, in the end, the virtues of others that so wrenches our hearts as it is the sense of almost unbearably poignant recognition when we see them at their most base, in their sorrow and gluttony and foolishness. You need the virtues, tooโsome sort of virtuesโbut we donโt care about Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina or Raskolnikov because theyโre good. We care about them because theyโre not admirable, because theyโre us, and because great writers have forgiven them for it.
Michael Cunningham