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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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Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Courage
Takes
Live
Much
Thinking
Life
Ordinary

More quotes by Colum McCann

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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.
Colum McCann
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There is always room for at least two truths.
Colum McCann
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Where happiness was not a possibility, the illusion of it was always more important.
Colum McCann
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I'm of the opinion that the real is imagined and the imagined is quite real. The real is imagined, in the sense that we shape our stories, so anything that even happens on the news gets shaped in a certain way and gets a texture, and that the imagined can be real.
Colum McCann
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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.
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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Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't.
Colum McCann
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This is not my life. These are not my cobwebs. This is not the darkness I was designed for.
Colum McCann
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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
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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.
Colum McCann
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Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years
Colum McCann
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I grew up sort of middle class, safe and suburban.
Colum McCann
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The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.
Colum McCann
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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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We have to admire the world for not ending on us.
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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A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.
Colum McCann
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He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off they're hungry. The way he said it went something like: Glorify their appetites.
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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Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.
Colum McCann