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

Colum McCann

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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

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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.
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They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least in heaven his Spanish chick'll be able to reach in and grab his heart.
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Yet she likes complications. She wishes she could turn and say: I like people who unbalance me.
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Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.
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We stumble on, thinks Jaslyn, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves. It is almost enough.
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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 the language right.
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She was forever tilted sideways by the notion that pain was inevitable, chance was cruel, and all human ingenuity should go towards the making of a good cup of tea.
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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.
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I think a good novel can be a doorstop to despair. I also think the real bravery comes with those who prepared to go through that door and look at the world in all its grime and torment, and still find something of value, no matter how small.
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Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.
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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
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There are no days more full than those we go back to.
Colum McCann
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I write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations.
Colum McCann
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Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't.
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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.
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She takes another long haul, lets the smoke settle in her lungs-- she has heard somewhere that cigarettes are good for grief. One long drag and you forget how to cry. The body too busy dealing with the poison.
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I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page.
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I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.
Colum McCann
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If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.
Colum McCann
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The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity.
Colum McCann