Quotes from book
The Hours

The Hours
Michael Cunningham

The Hours is a 1998 novel written by Michael Cunningham. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was later made into an Oscar-winning 2002 film of the same name starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.

Michael Cunningham photo

“She is, above all else, tired; she wants more than anything to return to her bed and her book. The world, this world, feels suddenly stunned and stunted, far from everything.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Michael Cunningham photo

“What I wanted to do seemed simple. I wanted something alive and shocking enough that it could be a morning in somebody's life. The most ordinary morning. Imagine, trying to do that.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Michael Cunningham photo

“Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Michael Cunningham photo

“What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Michael Cunningham photo

“What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. And there it is… It was death. I chose life.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Michael Cunningham photo

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Variant: You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
Source: The Hours

Michael Cunningham photo

“There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Michael Cunningham photo

“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.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Michael Cunningham photo

“Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Michael Cunningham photo

“There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Michael Cunningham photo

“These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody's little display of genius.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Michael Cunningham photo

“But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

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