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 mean, every novel's a historical novel anyway. But calling something a historical novel seems to put mittens on it, right? It… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
He looks like the sort of man who can't afford to leave, and doesn't want to stay, and so he is doing… — 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
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
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
Part of me really wants to believe that hope is entirely available to all of us. We don't have to embrace it.… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
Let this be a lesson to us all, said the preacher. You will be walking someday in the dark and the truth… — Colum McCann Copy Share Image
I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There… — 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
