Quote

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

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Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Trying
Memory
Always
Filled
Like
Return
Memories
Water
Stream
Family
Streams
Moments
Originals
Back
Original

More quotes by Colum McCann

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The Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy.
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With all respects to heaven, I like it here.
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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.
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Memory has a heavy backspin, yet it’s still impossible to land exactly where we took off.
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I think it is our job, as writers, to be epic. Epic and tiny at the same time. If you're going to be a fiction writer, why not take on something that means something. In doing this, you must understand that within that epic structure it is the tiny story that is possibly more important.
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I'm only telling you on the truth, he said. If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.
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I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.
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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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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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The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.
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One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.
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One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.
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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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I have the most charmed, most - I feel entirely blessed and lucky that I have the life that I have.
Colum McCann
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Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years
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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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The point of flight. To get rid of oneself. That was reason enough to fly.
Colum McCann
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We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what really was, what it meant.
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The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity.
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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.
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