“Literature can stop my heart and execute me for a moment, allow me to become someone else.” — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
“Literature can remind us that not all ife is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.” — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told. — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I have different books for different times of the day, let alone different seasons of the year! — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
In a certain way, novelists become unacknowledged historians, because we talk about small, tiny, little anonymous moments that won't necessarily make it… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I'd been involved in journalism for a long time - my dad's a journalist, he's written many books, and when I was… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Personally, I like the social novel. I like writing that gets in and under the hood and looks about - at what's… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I think literature can make familiar the unfamiliar, and the unfamiliar is very much about the dispossessed, and so the value of… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I mean, every novel's a historical novel anyway. But calling something a historical novel seems to put mittens on it, right? It… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I think a good novel can be a doorstop to despair. I also think the real bravery comes with those who prepared… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Whenever summer rolls around I begin to realize that I'm a complete and utter book snob. In relation to reading, I have… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Every first thing is always a miracle. The first person you fall in love with. The first letter you receive. The first… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive. — Colum McCann Copy Share
“There is something that happens to the mind in moments of terror. Perhaps we figure it's the last we'll ever have and we record… — Colum McCann Copy Share
“The short sharp shock of three thousand mother two hundred mothers. The ones who picked through the supermarket debris for pieces of their dead… — Colum McCann Copy Share
I'm not so sure that I can teach people how to, you know, write dialogue or create plot or anything like that. But if… — Colum McCann Copy Share
“How long ago it was and how strange, but all dead friends come to life again sometimes.” — Colum McCann Copy Share
“She would want, instead, to recall him in the air, between layers of cloud. To give him back that ancient dignity.” — Colum McCann Copy Share
Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get… — Colum McCann Copy Share
I think one of the biggest political failures, and the biggest social failures, over the past few years has been the failure of empathy;… — Colum McCann Copy Share
“Bits of it floating in the air, he said. "It's like dust. You walk about and don't see it, don't notice it, but it's… — Colum McCann Copy Share
“He has read whole volumes on the philosophy of nonviolence. How peace had to be understood in all its moral dimensions. The proper coexistence… — Colum McCann Copy Share
“She’s always thought that one of the beauties of New York is that you can be from anywhere and within moments of landing it… — Colum McCann Copy Share
I'm of the opinion that the real is imagined and the imagined is quite real. The real is imagined, in the sense that we… — Colum McCann Copy Share
“She had that emigrant’s sadness—she would never go back to her old country—it was gone in more senses than one—but she was forever gazing… — Colum McCann Copy Share
