Colum McCann Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• There are no days more full than those we go back to.

  Colum McCann

  7 Copy quote

• Every man with his own peculiar vice. His will hardly rock heaven or hell.

  Colum McCann

  Men, Rocks, Heaven

  Colum McCann (2013). “TransAtlantic”, p.79, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• 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

  Mother, Writing, Son

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let the Great World Spin: A Novel”, p.107, Random House

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

  Colum McCann

  Should, Stills, Asks

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let The Great World Spin”, p.74, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• With all respects to heaven, I like it here.

  Colum McCann

  Heaven

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let The Great World Spin”, p.11, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't.

  Colum McCann

  Sometimes, Function

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let the Great World Spin: A Novel”, p.155, Random House

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• I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There is a still point where the present, the now, winds around itself, and nothing is tangled. The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what has happened and what is to arrive.

  Colum McCann

  Wind, Rivers, Tangled

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let The Great World Spin”, p.240, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• How inevitable it is; we step into an ordinary moment and never come out again.

  Colum McCann

  Ordinary, Steps, Moments

  Colum McCann (2008). “Zoli: A Novel”, p.84, Random House

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• Corrigan told me once that Christ was quite easy to understand. He went where He was supposed to go. He stayed where He was needed. He took little or nothing along, a pair of sandals, a bit of a shirt, a few odds and ends to stave off the loneliness. He never rejected the world. If He had rejected it, He would have been rejecting mystery. And if He rejected mystery, He would have been rejecting faith.

  Colum McCann

  Loneliness, Odds, Pairs

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let The Great World Spin”, p.18, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• So much of her time spent like this: dreaming up things to say and never quite saying them.

  Colum McCann

  Dream, Time Spent

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let The Great World Spin”, p.285, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I'm of the opinion that the real is imagined and the imagined is quite real. The real is imagined, in the sense that we shape our stories, so anything that even happens on the news gets shaped in a certain way and gets a texture, and that the imagined can be real.

  Colum McCann

  Real, News, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.

  Colum McCann

  Writing, Impossible, Knows

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• There are fewer and fewer Jews in Ireland, but we still have one of the most famous Jewish characters in literary history, of course, in Leopold Bloom.

  Colum McCann

  Character, Jew, Stills

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

  4 Copy quote

• A lot of people think that writers are much cleverer than they actually are. No, they're not. But they're emotionally clever, and they go into a character, and they feel something that they weren't entirely aware of beforehand.

  Colum McCann

  Clever, Character, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• 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. What you want in your writing is to have a sort of wildness that occurs. And then, out of the wildness, a structure emerges.

  Colum McCann

  Writing, Stories, Want

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• If you sort of see yourself writing into a space that you don't always recognize, you sometimes learn things that you knew, but weren't entirely aware of. It's very liberating for a writer to go into a space where she or he has not gone before, because, instead of being a tourist, you're like an explorer now, and you're sort of lost in this new idea.

  Colum McCann

  Writing, Ideas, Space

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.

  Colum McCann

  Perfection, Stories, Language

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

  6 Copy quote

• We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

  Colum McCann

  People, Stories, Way

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

  7 Copy quote

• The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.

  Colum McCann

  Thinking, Lasts, Firsts

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let the Great World Spin: A Novel”, p.349, Random House

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• He might have been naive, but he didn't care; he said he's rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic.

  Colum McCann

  Heart, Care, Might

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• The job of the writer is to look at where he is now and make some sort of emotional sense of it, not only for that moment but for years to come.

  Colum McCann

  Jobs, Emotional, Years

  "Interview with Colum McCann" by Adam Dunn, www.sfgate.com. July 05, 2009.

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• About 25 years ago, I took a bicycle across the United States. I soon found out that the greatest item of clothing was the trusty bandanna. There were dozens of uses for a bandanna - as a pot holder, a chain cleaner, a sun shield, a headband, a snot rag, a declaration of Kerouacian intent.

  Colum McCann

  Years, United States, Rags

  "How I Dress Now: Colum McCann" by Colum Mccann, www.esquire.com. January 31, 2013.

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• I have the most charmed, most - I feel entirely blessed and lucky that I have the life that I have.

  Colum McCann

  Blessed, Lucky, Feels

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• Yet she likes complications. She wishes she could turn and say: I like people who unbalance me.

  Colum McCann

  Life, People, Wish

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let The Great World Spin”, p.285, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Sometimes we just walk into something that is not for us at all. We pretend it is. We think we can shrug it off like a coat, but it's not a coat at all, it's more like another skin. [...] All I wanted was to make my life thrilling for a while: to take the oridinary objects of my days and make a different argument out of them, no obligations to my past.

  Colum McCann

  Past, Thinking, Skins

  4 Copy quote

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