The further away we got from 9/11, the more I wanted to find some way to recover. I wanted to talk about… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Very seldom in my fiction have I directly used the stories people have told me. I think ripping off people's lives in… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
It's not very fashionable, but I love life, and I believe that things disappear and reappear and nothing ever solidifies, no matter… — 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'm very boring, really: I live on the Upper East Side, a block from the park. I have three kids. I go… — 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
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
