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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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Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Something
Stills
Door
Good
Also
Prepared
Think
Still
Value
Thinking
Find
Doors
World
Look
Novel
Grime
Matter
Small
Torment
Looks
Values
Bravery
Real
Comes
Despair

More quotes by Colum McCann

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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.
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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I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.
Colum McCann
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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
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The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity.
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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We have to admire the world for not ending on us.
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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Part of me really wants to believe that hope is entirely available to all of us. We don't have to embrace it. It would be sentimental and silly to say that we all need it, but it is absolutely available to all of us.
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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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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The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.
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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If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.
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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With all respects to heaven, I like it here.
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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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