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 our 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.
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 CunninghamVenture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself.
Michael CunninghamThere's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined.
Michael Cunningham