Quote

Memory has a heavy backspin, yet it’s still impossible to land exactly where we took off.

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
Land
Impossible
Stills
Still
Heavy
Memory
Exactly
Took
Memories

More quotes by Colum McCann

Image
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
Image
Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
Sometimes thinking back on things is a mistake arising out of pride, but I guess you live inside a moment for years, move with it and feel it grow, and it sends out roots until it touches everything in sight.
Colum McCann
Image
The Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy.
Colum McCann
Image
A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
I’m not interested in blind optimism, but I’m very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, ‘This is not enough.’ But it takes time, more time than we can sometimes imagine, to get there. And sometimes we don’t.
Colum McCann
Image
It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.
Colum McCann
Image
There is always room for at least two truths.
Colum McCann
Image
I don't know of a greater privilege than being allowed to tell a story, or to listen to a story. They're the only thing we have that can trump life itself.
Colum McCann
Image
There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.
Colum McCann
Image
Whatever you say, say nothing.
Colum McCann
Image
I write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations.
Colum McCann
Image
Women get the short shrift in history. It's been largely written and dictated by men, or at least men believe that we own it, and women have really been in those quieter moments at the edge of history. But, really, they're the ones who are turning the cogs and the wheels and allowing things like the peace process to happen.
Colum McCann
Image
Pain is not wat you get, it is wat you give.
Colum McCann
Image
One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.
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
...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
The world does not turn without moments of grace. Who cares how small.
Colum McCann