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
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
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
That's what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they… — 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
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
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
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 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
“In another life I would have liked to be a poet, I just can’t stop the lines in time, so I’m a… — 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 write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations. — 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
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
“We get our voice from the voices of others. Read promiscuously. Imitate, copy, but become your own voice.” — 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
“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
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
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
Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told. — 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
“Literature can remind us that not all ife is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.” — 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
