Quote

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

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Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Heard
Poison
Haul
Forget
Dealing
Cigarettes
Another
Smoke
Lungs
Body
Somewhere
Settle
Long
Busy
Lets
Good
Grief
Cigarette
Cry
Drag
Takes
Settling

More quotes by Colum McCann

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A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.
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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.
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...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether.
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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’m not interested in blind optimism, but I’m very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, ‘This is not enough.’ But it takes time, more time than we can sometimes imagine, to get there. And sometimes we don’t.
Colum McCann
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Yet she likes complications. She wishes she could turn and say: I like people who unbalance me.
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.
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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.
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Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.
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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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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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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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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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Where happiness was not a possibility, the illusion of it was always more important.
Colum McCann
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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.
Colum McCann
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I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.
Colum McCann
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Whatever you say, say nothing.
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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I grew up sort of middle class, safe and suburban.
Colum McCann
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Memory has a heavy backspin, yet it’s still impossible to land exactly where we took off.
Colum McCann