Mother Quote by Colum McCann

“That's what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past.” quote by Colum McCann — Download Open image

“That's what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past.”

Colum McCann

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Mother Parenting Past Realizing Son Time Writing

More by Colum McCann

Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.

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“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…

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“The short sharp shock of three thousand mother two hundred mothers. The ones who picked through the supermarket debris for pieces of their dead husbands. The ones who still laundered their gone son's bed sheets by hand. The ones who kept an extra teacup at the end of the table, in case of miracles. The elegant ones, the angry ones,…

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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…

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“Once we had filled each other with desire, not remembrance.”

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“How long ago it was and how strange, but all dead friends come to life again sometimes.”

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“She would want, instead, to recall him in the air, between layers of cloud. To give him back that ancient dignity.”

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Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get…

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It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.

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I think one of the biggest political failures, and the biggest social failures, over the past few years has been the failure of empathy;…

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“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 there and it's all coming down, covering everything. You're breathing it in. You touch it. You drink it. You eat it. But it's so fine you don't notice it. But you're covered in it. It's everywhere.…

Colum McCann

“He has read whole volumes on the philosophy of nonviolence. How peace had to be understood in all its moral dimensions. The proper coexistence of all existents. The excluded middle ground. The surpassing of personality. The vanity of cultural superiority. The tension between individual conscience and collective responsibility. The need to proclaim again and again what has already been said.”

Colum McCann

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