Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't. — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Sometimes we just walk into something that is not for us at all. We pretend it is. We think we can shrug… — 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’m not interested in blind optimism, but I’m very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says,… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
He didn't like it all that much when he first came - all the rubbish and the rush - but it was… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Sometimes, in life, nothing happens. But, sometimes, nothing happens beautifully. — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
That was the sort of everyday love I had to learn to contend with: if you grow up with it, it's hard… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
He told me once that there was no better faith than a wounded faith and sometimes I wonder if that is what… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Sometimes thinking back on things is a mistake arising out of pride, but I guess you live inside a moment for years,… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said,… — 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“How long ago it was and how strange, but all dead friends come to life again sometimes.” — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
