I think we need stories, and we need to tell the stories over and over and over not only to remind us,… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
“For a moment I felt a vicious hatred for him and his quiet ways, his mundane stroll through the summer, his ordinariness,… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Women get the short shrift in history. It's been largely written and dictated by men, or at least men believe that we… — 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
“It's hardly wisdom, but the older I get the more I believe that our lives are built not out of time, but… — 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
“Well, I'd say fuck too, if I were me. I'd say it backward and forward and around the block, fuck this and… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
“What happened then was that, for an instant, almost nothing happened. He wasn't even there. Failure didn't even cross his mind. It… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
“Once upon a time and long ago, in fact so long ago that I couldn't have been there, and I wasn't there,… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
“When I was seventeen I had a body that Adam woulda dropped Eve for. Hot-potato time. It was prime, no lie. Nothing… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
The tunnels of our lives connect, coming to daylight at the oddest moments, and then plunge us into the dark again. We… — 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
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
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
“At what whirling moment had she halted and turned, unbeknownst to herself, the other way?” — 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'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
“If you are wise you step through the darkness only one foot at a time.” — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
“The elaborate search for a word, like the turning of a chain handle on a well. Dropping the bucket down the mineshaft… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
So much of her time spent like this: dreaming up things to say and never quite saying them. — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
And I suddenly think, as I look across the table at him, that these are the days as they will be. This… — 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
