“A celestial light appeared to Barrett Meeks in the sky over Central Park, four days after Barrett had been mauled, once again, by love. It was by no means his first romantic dropkick, but it was the first to have been conveyed by way of a five-line text, the fifth line of which was a crushingly corporate wish for good luck in the future, followed by three lowercase xxx’s.”

—  Michael Cunningham

The Snow Queen (2014)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A celestial light appeared to Barrett Meeks in the sky over Central Park, four days after Barrett had been mauled, once…" by Michael Cunningham?
Michael Cunningham photo
Michael Cunningham 28
American novelist and screenwriter 1952

Related quotes

“Still haunted by Haiku, and tried my hand at it, but I fall pitifully short of the Wordsworthian touch. But failure in this realm turned my mind to an old enthusiasm of mine, the Welsh englyn. This verse form was derived by the Welsh from the inscriptions which their Roman conquerors put on tombs … A good englym must have four lines, of ten, then six, syllables, the last two lines having seven syllables each. In the first line there must be a break after the seventh, eighth, or ninth syllable, and the rhyme with the second line comes at this break; but the tenth syllable of the first line must either rhyme or be in assonance with the middle of the second line. The last two lines must rhyme with the first rhyme in the first line, but the third or fourth line must rhyme on a weak syllable. Got that?”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

"Haiku and Englyn" in The Toronto Daily Star (4 April 1959), republished in The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies (1979) edited by Judith Skelton Grant, p. 241.

Everett Dirksen photo

“We have been through this biennial convulsion four or five different times over the past 10 or 12 years, and now it appears that we are going through this quiet agony all over again.”

Everett Dirksen (1896–1969) United States Army officer

Remarks in the Senate on a resolution to amend Senate Rule 22 (cloture), Congressional Record (January 11, 1967), vol. 113, p. 182
1960s

Naomi Novik photo

“It seems to me after a fellow has been mutinied against three or four times, there is something to it besides bad luck.”

Naomi Novik book Tongues of Serpents

Source: Tongues of Serpents

Roger Waters photo

“Oh, they [the Media] definitely don't want to know the real Barrett story… there are no facts involved in the Barrett story so they can make up any story they like, and they do. There's a vague basis in fact: Syd was in the band and he did write the material on the first album, 80% of it, but that's all. It is only that one album, and that's what people don't realise. That first album, and one track on the second. That's all; nothing else.”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

quoted in Lost In The Woods by Julian Palacios, 1997
Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett

Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“He does not always remain bent over the
pages; he often leans back and closes
his eyes over a line he has been reading
again, and its meaning spreads through
his blood.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer
Will Cuppy photo

“Attila was now sixtyish. His mind was weakening and he decided to marry again, as he had been terribly misunderstood the first three hundred times.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part III: Strange Bedfellows, Attila the Hun

“A first kiss after five months means more than a first kiss after five minutes.”

Steve Kluger (1952) American writer

Source: My Most Excellent Year

Walter Dill Scott photo

“One young lady asserted that she had never looked at any of the cards in the cars in which she had been riding for years. When questioned further, it appeared that she knew by heart almost every advertisement appearing on the line (Chicago and Evanston line), and that the goods advertised had won her highest esteem. She was not aware of the fact that she had been studying the advertisements, and flatly resented the suggestion that she had been influenced by them. Some of the goods advertised were known to her only by these advertisements, yet she supposed that they had nothing to do with her esteem of the goods. She supposed that she had always known them, that they were used in her home, or that they had been recommended to her. She did not remember when she had first heard of them.”

Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) President of Northwestern university and psychologist

Source: The Psychology of Advertising in Theory and Practice, 1908, p. 370-371

Agatha Christie photo

“We shall not hunt together again, my friend. Our first hunt was here — and our last … They were good days, Yes, they have been good days…”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Hercule Poirot
Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975)

Clifford D. Simak photo

“That had not been the first time nor had it been the last, but all the years of killing boiled down in essence to that single moment — not the time that came after, but that long and terrible instant when he had watched the lines of men purposefully striding up the slope to kill him.”

Clifford D. Simak book Way Station

Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 25
Context: That had not been the first time nor had it been the last, but all the years of killing boiled down in essence to that single moment — not the time that came after, but that long and terrible instant when he had watched the lines of men purposefully striding up the slope to kill him.
It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war, the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death or misery, might prove a right or uphold a principle.
Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries.

Related topics