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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.

Colum McCann

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Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Good
Towards
Notion
Tilted
Forever
Sideways
Chance
Ingenuity
Pain
Tea
Making
Cruel
Human
Cups
Humans
Inevitable

More quotes by Colum McCann

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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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Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.
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There are no days more full than those we go back to.
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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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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.
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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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The Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy.
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The point of flight. To get rid of oneself. That was reason enough to fly.
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I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book
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I write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations.
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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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Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.
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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.
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Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.
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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.
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One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.
Colum McCann
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The world does not turn without moments of grace. Who cares how small.
Colum McCann
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Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.
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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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It had never occurred to me before but everything in New York is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself, each thing as strange as the last, and connected.
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