A Quote by Michael Cunningham

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper. — © Michael Cunningham
One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.
It's always a better choice to write a new book than it is to keep pounding your head against the submissions wall with a book that's just not happening. The next book you write could be the book, the one that isn't a fight to get representation for at all.
I often get asked, 'Is the book dead?' It hasn't happened yet. It's different than music. Music was always meant to be pure sound - it started out as pure sound and now it's pure sound again. But books started out as things. Words on paper began as words on paper. The paperback book is the best technology to deliver that information to you.
One of the biggest, and possibly the biggest, obstacle to becoming a writer... is learning to live with the fact that the wonderful story in your head is infinitely better, truer, more moving, more fascinating, more perceptive, than anything you're going to manage to get down on paper.
A mind in control is always better than a mind out of control. For one thing, a controlled mind can learn much better and go much further than a chaotic one. A person with a steady-state mind has the potential to exit this life with a much greater understanding than someone who is continually learning and forgetting, gaining and misplacing knowledge.
The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them. A young writer must cross many psychological barriers to acquire confidence in his capacity to produce good work-especially his first full-length book-and he cannot do this by staring at a piece of blank paper, searching for the perfect sentence.
When a movie based on a book comes out, people always say that the book is always better than the movie. So I'm always interested in reading the book, too.
My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.
If I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a cheap book, - and that is a book honestly come by.
The world cannot hold onto you, for the world is not sentient. The world doesn't have a mind nor does it have desires; it is only your mind's objectivisation. It is your own mind's play which imagines that an object-call it the mind or whatever-can hold onto you. It is the idea you have of who you are that is holding onto its own fearful projections as the mind. Leave all of this and remain as the pure, joyous Self.
If you're going to buy a real book, a paper book, there better be a good reason. Perhaps scarcity is one of those reasons.
It taught that there are three versions of things: the one I see in my mind, and the one that carries onto the paper, and then what it ultimately becomes.
It's really hard to get a book published, even a good book, but the better the book is the better chance it has of eventually catching someone's attention.
I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands.
Our focus is to see that we are growing faster than the industry and, whichever product we launch, we do better than competition. We try and manage our operations better than competition. Essentially, we try to be better than what we were the previous year.
You can get stuck in one state of mind or a general area of mind for a thousand lifetimes. Some states of mind afford better views than others.
But a piece of paper can be a powerful presence. I have always had enormous respect for the written word and invariably find a letter more revealing than a face-to-face conversation. In a strange way I suspect I will get to know you better at a distance than I would if you had stayed at home.
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