I write about what I know; and I write about things that are new to me, and that I didn't know before. — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
“Literature can stop my heart and execute me for a moment, allow me to become someone else.” — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
“What was life anyway? An accumulation of small shelves if incident. Stacked at odd angles to each other.” — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I'm much more interested in allowing a story to happen, and people find whatever meaning is in there. — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own. — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know. — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
The job of the writer is to look at where he is now and make some sort of emotional sense of it,… — 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
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
A lot of people think that writers are much cleverer than they actually are. No, they're not. But they're emotionally clever, and… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
If you have a structure beforehand, you're sort of stuffing your story into a pre-assembled box. You don't want that to happen.… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I want the younger writer to know that she or he is meaningful, that what they have to say is powerful in… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
The contemporary American novelist benefits in a way from being ignored. It makes you angrier and makes you want to go into… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I'm not so sure that I can teach people how to, you know, write dialogue or create plot or anything like that.… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I don't believe a poet has a better hold on truth or morality than a fiction writer has. And I don't think… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
“A writer is an explorer. She knows she wants to get somewhere, but she doesn’t know if the somewhere even exists yet.… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I love short stories. They're like small imploding universes. They are very tightly bound and controlled. I'd been wanting to write one… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
If you sort of see yourself writing into a space that you don't always recognize, you sometimes learn things that you knew,… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I think it is our job, as writers, to be epic. Epic and tiny at the same time. If you're going to… — 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
The short story is an imploding universe. It has all the boil of energy inside it. A novel has shrapnel going all… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
If you're a writer, you know there are ways in which we don't know what we're doing at all. We're working out… — 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
