Colum McCann

If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.

— Colum McCann

He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off…

— Colum McCann

“She expected no judgement and wanted no pity.”

— Colum McCann

“He was holding the image of his own people up: sometimes it was weight enough to stagger under.”

— Colum McCann

Corrigan told me once that Christ was quite easy to understand. He went where He was supposed to go. He stayed where…

— Colum McCann

“Someone was high or brilliant or both.”

— Colum McCann

“The tightrope walk was an act of creation that seemed to stand in direct defiance to the act of destruction twenty-seven years…

— Colum McCann

“You're manic-depressive and you're manic-depressive too and you, you're definitely manic-depressive, girl. And you over there in the corner, you're just plain…

— Colum McCann

He realized that he had thought only about the first step, never imagined the last.

— Colum McCann

They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least…

— Colum McCann

Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was…

— Colum McCann

“death by drowning, death by snakebite ... death by memory loss, death by claymore ... death by paper cuts, death by whoreknife,…

— Colum McCann

...it was necessary to love silence, but before you could love silence you had to have noise.

— Colum McCann

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

“If your life doesn't flash in front of your eyes, old boy, does that mean you've had no life at all?”

— Colum McCann

There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once…

— Colum McCann

He didn't like it all that much when he first came - all the rubbish and the rush - but it was…

— Colum McCann

“Some days he wishes that he could simply empty the chambers of the men, fill the halls instead with women: the short…

— Colum McCann

“It was one of those moments when everything is out of balance, I suppose, and just watching an odd thing seems to…

— Colum McCann

My wardrobe is drab. I could spend six weeks in the same jeans. Most everything I have is blue or black, but…

— Colum McCann

“The conspiracy of women. We are in it together, make no mistake.”

— Colum McCann

“He was standing on the little ledge of reality he had left, but it seemed to me that he wasn't getting high,…

— Colum McCann

I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really.…

— Colum McCann

Sometimes, in life, nothing happens. But, sometimes, nothing happens beautifully.

— Colum McCann

“He was there, he said, to raise just a single hat, but eventually that hat would raise the heavens. He would go…

— Colum McCann