Quote

Pain is not wat you get, it is wat you give.

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
Giving
Pain
Give

More quotes by 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
Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.
Colum McCann
Image
We have to admire the world for not ending on us.
Colum McCann
Image
The Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy.
Colum McCann
Image
I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.
Colum McCann
Image
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.
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
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.
Colum McCann
Image
The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity.
Colum McCann
Image
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.
Colum McCann
Image
Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years
Colum McCann
Image
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.
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
Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.
Colum McCann
Image
One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.
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
We stumble on, thinks Jaslyn, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves. It is almost enough.
Colum McCann
Image
The world does not turn without moments of grace. Who cares how small.
Colum McCann
Image
He felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake.
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