Quote

Where happiness was not a possibility, the illusion of it was always more important.

Colum McCann

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Illusion
Possibility
Happiness
Important
Always

More quotes by Colum McCann

Image
I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.
Colum McCann
Image
With all respects to heaven, I like it here.
Colum McCann
Image
The world does not turn without moments of grace. Who cares how small.
Colum McCann
Image
I'm a complete and utter fiction. Then again, we all are.
Colum McCann
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 the language right.
Colum McCann
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 they go into a character, and they feel something that they weren't entirely aware of beforehand.
Colum McCann
Image
I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.
Colum McCann
Image
There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface. There is, I think, a fear of love. There is a fear of love.
Colum McCann
Image
It is not fashionable anymore, I suppose, to have a regard for one's mother in the way my brother and I had then, in the mid-1950s, when the noise outside the window was mostly wind and sea chime.
Colum McCann
Image
I write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations.
Colum McCann
Image
One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.
Colum McCann
Image
Let this be a lesson to us all, said the preacher. You will be walking someday in the dark and the truth will come shining through, and behind you will be a life that you never want to see again.
Colum McCann
Image
...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether.
Colum McCann
Image
People think they know the mystery of living in your skin. They don't. There's no one who knows except the person who carts it around her own self.
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
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
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 I can get them and grab them by the scruff of the neck and say, you can do this, and if I see that fire in their eyes, that's when I think I know a writer.
Colum McCann
Image
It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.
Colum McCann
Image
He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off they're hungry. The way he said it went something like: Glorify their appetites.
Colum McCann
Image
She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.
Colum McCann