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That's what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past.

Colum McCann

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Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Come
Mothers
Writing
Son
Realize
Realizing
Write
Tell
Recall
Mother
Recalls
Past
Sons

More quotes by Colum McCann

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Whatever you say, say nothing.
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I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.
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We have to admire the world for not ending on us.
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The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth.
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We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what really was, what it meant.
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I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book
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I grew up sort of middle class, safe and suburban.
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.
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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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Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.
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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I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.
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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She was forever tilted sideways by the notion that pain was inevitable, chance was cruel, and all human ingenuity should go towards the making of a good cup of tea.
Colum McCann
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Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years
Colum McCann
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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.
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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There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface. There is, I think, a fear of love. There is a fear of love.
Colum McCann
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With all respects to heaven, I like it here.
Colum McCann