So much of her time spent like this: dreaming up things to say and never quite saying them. — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
The essence of intelligence was to know when, or if, to expose even the heart's deep need for instruction. — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
He might have been naive, but he didn't care; he said he's rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
She was forever tilted sideways by the notion that pain was inevitable, chance was cruel, and all human ingenuity should go towards… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
“I could tell from Anna's face that she had already told him about dancing in Saint Petersburg and that the memory weighed… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them.… — 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
