Quote

Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.

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
Never
Dreamed
Allowed
Democracy
Stories
Become
Best

More quotes by Colum McCann

Image
Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.
Colum McCann
Image
People think they know the mystery of living in your skin. They don't. There's no one who knows except the person who carts it around her own self.
Colum McCann
Image
The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.
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
I have the most charmed, most - I feel entirely blessed and lucky that I have the life that I have.
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
He might have been naive, but he didn't care he said he's rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic.
Colum McCann
Image
I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page.
Colum McCann
Image
One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.
Colum McCann
Image
I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.
Colum McCann
Image
Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't.
Colum McCann
Image
Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
With all respects to heaven, I like it here.
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
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
I grew up sort of middle class, safe and suburban.
Colum McCann
Image
He didn't like it all that much when he first came - all the rubbish and the rush - but it was growing on him, it wasn't half bad. Coming to the city was like entering a tunnel, he said, and finding to your surprise that the light at the end didn't matter sometimes in fact the tunnel made the light tolerable.
Colum McCann