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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.

Colum McCann

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Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Telling
Stand
Asks
Truth

More quotes by Colum McCann

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Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.
Colum McCann
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A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.
Colum McCann
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The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.
Colum McCann
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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
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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
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She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.
Colum McCann
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One look at each other and it was immediately understood that they both needed a clean slate,,, The obliteration of memory.
Colum McCann
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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.
Colum McCann
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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.
Colum McCann
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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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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
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There is always room for at least two truths.
Colum McCann
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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
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I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.
Colum McCann
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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.
Colum McCann
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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.
Colum McCann
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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
Colum McCann
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Let this be a lesson to us all, said the preacher. You will be walking someday in the dark and the truth will come shining through, and behind you will be a life that you never want to see again.
Colum McCann
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The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.
Colum McCann