Michael Cunningham Quote

She's had a long life. Now she's going to the Lord. Frankly it creeps me out a little when you say things like that, Simon said. It shouldn't. If you don't like 'Lord,' pick another word. She's going home. She's going back to the party. Whatever you like. I suppose you have some definite ideas about an afterlife. Sure. We get reabsorbed into the earthly and celestial mechanism. No heaven? That's heaven. What about realms of glory? What about walking around in golden slippers? We abandon consciousness as if we were waking from a bad dream. We throw it off like clothes that never fit us right. It's an ecstatic release we're physically unable to apprehend while we're in our bodies. Orgasm is our best hint, but it's crude and minor by comparison.

Michael Cunningham

She's had a long life. Now she's going to the Lord. Frankly it creeps me out a little when you say things like that, Simon said. It shouldn't. If you don't like 'Lord,' pick another word. She's going home. She's going back to the party. Whatever you like. I suppose you have some definite ideas about an afterlife. Sure. We get reabsorbed into the earthly and celestial mechanism. No heaven? That's heaven. What about realms of glory? What about walking around in golden slippers? We abandon consciousness as if we were waking from a bad dream. We throw it off like clothes that never fit us right. It's an ecstatic release we're physically unable to apprehend while we're in our bodies. Orgasm is our best hint, but it's crude and minor by comparison.

Tags: death, orgasm

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About Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham (born November 6, 1952) is an American novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999. Cunningham is Professor in the Practice of Creative Writing at Yale University.