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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
Tell
Recall
Mother
Recalls
Past
Sons
Come
Mothers
Writing
Son
Realize
Realizing
Write

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.
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I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.
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This is not my life. These are not my cobwebs. This is not the darkness I was designed for.
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I'm not so sure that I can teach people how to, you know, write dialogue or create plot or anything like that. But if I can get them and grab them by the scruff of the neck and say, you can do this, and if I see that fire in their eyes, that's when I think I know a writer.
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The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.
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Pain is not wat you get, it is wat you give.
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Women get the short shrift in history. It's been largely written and dictated by men, or at least men believe that we own it, and women have really been in those quieter moments at the edge of history. But, really, they're the ones who are turning the cogs and the wheels and allowing things like the peace process to happen.
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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.
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I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.
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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.
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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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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.
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There are no days more full than those we go back to.
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We have to admire the world for not ending on us.
Colum McCann
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I'm only telling you on the truth, he said. If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't.
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